It’s time to switch to VMWare Fusion
July 11thI’m a proud owner of Parallels Desktop for OS X. It has served me admirably, but it’s time to move on.
A while back, when Parallels announced they could finally boot my BootCamp partition directly, I was in love. I had visions of Visual Studio and XCode existing side by side. Working on the SftpDrive Windows and OS X clients at the same time. Wouldn’t that be grand?
Then I tried it out, and was distinctly less enamored. It was SLOW. It worked, but I didn’t just buy a brand new MacBook Pro so I could have a slow, often painful, primary work environment that lacked any graphics acceleration. I’d love for it to have worked, but I switched back to plain old BootCamp. What can I say, I need my speed.
SWSoft is adding features to Parallels at a rapid pace, which I appreciate. However, their “core” virtualization experience really isn’t that good. Especially compared to VMWare Workstation, which I spend a huge amount of time using. I hate to do this, but let’s go over some of the major offenses:
20% CPU usage while the VM is completely idle, on a fresh install. No need to explain this further, not acceptable. For references - VMWare gives me about 2-4% usage.
It only supports one processor. That sucks.
Disk usage: Parallels Virtual Disk access is WAAAY slower, especially in BootCamp. I get around a 75% performance hit using the disk in BootCamp mode. That’s a made up number, but it feels SLOW. Copying around a 1GB file, painful. With VMWare I experience no such grief.
Memory usage: Man, nothing makes my system, with 2GB RAM, go turbo like trying to run a VM in Parallels with over 512 megs of RAM then switch to another memory-heavy applications, like XCode.
Thanks, Parallels - you really lit a fire under VMWare’s ass. It has taken a while to get here, but VMWare Fusion is at RC1. It’s time you gave it a shot. They are using the same x86 virtualization technologies that they’ve fined tuned in other products for nearly 10 years. It’s really good - you’ll notice the difference. It’s still free, so why not? VMWare is quickly approaching feature parity with Parallels, and it blows down the doors with the performance.
July 11th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Our professional services group has a large contingent of (not corporate approved, but tolerated) Mac fanatics.
We use Parallels and VMWare fusion, and this mimics our findings as well; VMWare is a lot faster, both for Windows and for running Linux VMs.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:25 am
God, this is so true. Thank you for pointing it out to me in the first place.
I like your use of “go turbo” with no definition. Someone needed to introduce that into the wild.
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
I foolishly shelled $80 to Parallels last year for, in my opinion, a beta program. USB Printing to a Zebra 2844 Thermal Printer was a nightmare and totally inconsistent. Then I found out to upgrade, I had to shell out more $$$. I put it on the shelf and had to deal with Boot Camp for a while…
Then came Vmware Fusion! Wow! Works like a charm. During my 30 day evaluation, I have been very impressed with speed, reliability & stability.
Most likely going to shell out for this one!
August 22nd, 2007 at 10:50 am
James - I went through the exact same buying cycle :) $160 for both isn’t terrible though. Still short of the $180 I paid for VMWare workstation 6 for windows.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Jeff,
I was lucky when I choose VMWare Fusion at first a couple of days ago. At first It seems the logical choice to buy Parallels 3.0, but that would be just because Apple Markets the product so damn good. If you really think for a minute or two, then you’ll come to the conclusion that VMWare has a lot more knowledge & experience roughly 10 years and there are virtually no vacancies for Parallels, but a lot for VMWare skills.
Before I had any experience with Parallels or VMWare, the 10 years VMWare and vacancies made me go VMWare and now that I’ve got a little bit of experience with VMWare, I’m so incredibly impressed and pleased with it.
Apple software products are good, but not all of them + it’s often overpriced and overrated!
Dump Parallels! Praise VMWare!