VMWare Fusion: a better mobile choice than Parallels?
That’s what I hope to find out as I just downloaded the free 30-day trial of VMWare Fusion for Mac OS X. I’ll be installing Windows Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate on the MacBook Pro and aside from evaluating the usability factor, I’m most interested in Fusion’s performance from a mobility standpoint. I’ve heard that it runs faster overall and hits the CPU less than Parallels; I figure that equates to less battery drain than Parallels. In fact, that’s the only negative I could really have with Parallels. If VMWare Fusion is a very comparable product and drains the battery less quickly, I might make the switch. While I get installed and set-up, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve compared the two virtualization products.
Maybe you won’t need a virtual windows operating system on your mac. Office 2008 will be released in January 2008.
Will be Universal Binary and hopefully be Exchange worthy.
VMWare at $59 after rebate and Office 2007 Ultimate which I already have would be a cheaper and preferred option for me.
It’s definitely faster to me. Other advantages are that VMWare has been around longer (and has more freely-available virtual machines), and a few other nuances as well. I think you’ll enjoy it, Kevin. I look forward to hearing what your take is and any comparison review you might do.
They both claim directx 3d compliance, I wonder which can actually run games well
Another awesome mobile feature of VMware Fusion is that it supports virtual battery pass-through.
Just power off your VM, go to the Virtual Machine -> Settings menu, and enable the Battery device. Then your virtual machine will know when your MacBook Pro’s battery is low, and it’ll warn you accordingly — even if you’re in full-screen mode.
Thing I love about Fusion vs Parallels… as well as running quicker on one core Fusion can take advantage of BOTH the cores (Parallels only plays with one).
And with the latest Bootcamp drivers the MacbookPro is just about the best platform for running Vista
Have you seen this post at cnet?
http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9760910-1.html
They did some good comparison benchmarks.
Kevin:
Have you tried double-booting using Apple’s Boot Camp & if so what was your impression?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303572
ichmoimeyo: no, I haven’t because that solution isn’t appealing to me personally. I already have quite capable machines that run Windows XP / Vista. While the MacBook Pro would likely run Vista very well for me using Boot Camp, I like the “best of both worlds” virtualization approach as it doesn’t require a reboot to move from one OS to another. I might give it a try in the future, but I have little to gain so it’s low on my priorities.
thanks, Kevin.
Just thought that the reboot would take about 1 minute or so and would at times save you carrying around two laptops.
[at no extra cost - just there if you needed it]
My dream machine:
-An Apple Tablet 13” MacBook with active+passive digitizer
-3xbooting: Linux / Mac / Vista Premium
[native OSes sharing common data area]
I’ve got Parallels and Fusion on my MacBook Pro. Fusion is faster hands down. It runs DirectX games better, and it works very well with the BootCamp partition.
Parallels corrupted my BootCamp partition. However, it has a slicker, cleaner GUI.
Personally, I like Fusion better.
I have parallels and vmware on my macbook, and trust me, vmware is way faster and uses less resources (cpu and ram). the interface shouldnt matter much – vmware’s unity and parallels’ coherence seem to work pretty much the same way! VMWARE all the way!!!!!!