Parallels vs. Fusion?

mh71mh71
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
New switcher here. There are a few apps from windows that I will still want to use. One is MS Access and another is Civ IV - a DirectX 9 game/addiction. Maybe a few others from time to time.



My question is does anyone have any strong opinions about either Parallels or Fusion? I'm particularly interested in the Unity mode(get to go straight to an app without firing up the full-on virtual machine).



Thanks for the imput.



ps. I'm aware that Civ IV comes in a mac version. Since I'm going to have a vitual machine anyway, it doesn't make sense to re buy the game.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    toxotestoxotes Posts: 102member
    I think there are lots of threads on parallels vs fusion and a google search on just that will bring up lots of conversations about the pros and cons of each. As for Unity, it's not really true that it lets you run a Windows program without firing up the virtual machine. Unity just shows your Windows program in a window as if it were another OS X program, but the virtual machine still has to be running in the background before the Windows program will launch. This is no problem if you were running Windows anyway, but if you weren't, having to wait for windows to start up in the background just so that it can launch a program to handle a particular type of file that you've just double-clicked in the Finder can get tiresome pretty quickly.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    guinnessguinness Posts: 473member
    Try out VirtualBox first, it's free, and now out of beta on OSX.



    http://www.virtualbox.org/



    I use it under Linux, to run an XP SP3 VM, and it runs fine. I've only run Solaris 10 on VB in OSX, but Solaris didn't virtualize well.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    backtomacbacktomac Posts: 4,579member
    Can't say how good Parallels is but I use VMW and it works very well. I run XP and Ubuntu virtual machines. XP works well. Still having some issues with configuring Ubuntu but the issues are related to Ubuntu and not VMW.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    I find VMWare is better at supporting the Bootcamp partition but Parallels stores and resumes from save states much quicker. VMWare takes about the same time to resume from a save as it takes to boot Windows, sometimes longer. This isn't a long time though.



    I wouldn't play 3D games with either one though.



    VMWare's USB support seems to be better in my experience too. Applications also definitely run faster under VMWare with the dual processor support. There is a benchmark online showing that Parallels runs apps a lot faster than VMWare and I think the Parallels site links to it but I haven't found that to be the case.



    I didn't benchmark them but some older 2D games jitter in Parallels and don't in VMWare.



    I would recommend that you use Bootcamp and if you need to do something without rebooting, use VMWare. With Bootcamp, you have to shut down the VM anyway so Parallels' save state speed wouldn't be an advantage.



    I never got Parallels' Coherence to work either but VMWare's Unity does. It's nothing special though and I don't use it. It just hides the Windows desktop, which can actually be quite annoying.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    1337_5l4xx0r1337_5l4xx0r Posts: 1,558member
    Excellent advice in this thread. Also, thanks for the heads-up on VirtualBox!
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