Parallels vs. Fusion 2.0
There has been a lot a parallels vs. boot camp discussions and probably some parallels vs. fusion but as VMWare just released fusion 2.0 I thought it was a good time to compare the two virtualization options (I know there are others but I don't think they are mainstream, or they don't advertise well).
I have used parallels on my desktop at work for over a year and on my laptop at home since it's initial release. It has always done great, I never used coherence because I generally had a second monitor connected when using it and I just used windows on one monitor and OS X on the other.
I have had no issues with parallels whatsoever, I use Visual Studio 2008, SQL Management Studio, an SAP product (and some AD management stuff) in it all without a hitch. I have a 24" iMac with a 22" monitor to the left of it. I was recently working on a long project that I had to develop in windows and I found it annoying that I had my head turned to the left (the 2nd monitor is to the left) all day. I decided to give coherence a try, I messed with it for a couple hours but didn't like the way it handled the task bar and moving applications between multiple monitors, it wasn't very clean and it wasn't worth the hassle.
VMWare released fusion 2.0 recently so I gave it a try, I imported my parallels VM (took about 2.5 hours, 90GB disk). I got it up and running in full screen mode and didn't see much of a difference. The speed was similar to parallels (slow to start apps in both at first, after about ten minutes it was fine) and there were no major features that I needed that parallels didn't have (note, that *I* needed). Then I switched to unity and it automatically placed my task bar on the bottom of the second monitor (just like in full screen mode) and I was able to move my applications from screen to screen with no difficulty and it looked very clean. You see some fragments when moving the windows around but nothing that a normal computer user would even notice and nothing that bothers me (.2 seconds of fragmentation when moving application from one screen to the other).
So, since everything else is the same and the unity/coherence feature is better in fusion than parallels I'm probably going to make the switch. Any others virtualization users have any comments to agree or disagree with my decision??
I have used parallels on my desktop at work for over a year and on my laptop at home since it's initial release. It has always done great, I never used coherence because I generally had a second monitor connected when using it and I just used windows on one monitor and OS X on the other.
I have had no issues with parallels whatsoever, I use Visual Studio 2008, SQL Management Studio, an SAP product (and some AD management stuff) in it all without a hitch. I have a 24" iMac with a 22" monitor to the left of it. I was recently working on a long project that I had to develop in windows and I found it annoying that I had my head turned to the left (the 2nd monitor is to the left) all day. I decided to give coherence a try, I messed with it for a couple hours but didn't like the way it handled the task bar and moving applications between multiple monitors, it wasn't very clean and it wasn't worth the hassle.
VMWare released fusion 2.0 recently so I gave it a try, I imported my parallels VM (took about 2.5 hours, 90GB disk). I got it up and running in full screen mode and didn't see much of a difference. The speed was similar to parallels (slow to start apps in both at first, after about ten minutes it was fine) and there were no major features that I needed that parallels didn't have (note, that *I* needed). Then I switched to unity and it automatically placed my task bar on the bottom of the second monitor (just like in full screen mode) and I was able to move my applications from screen to screen with no difficulty and it looked very clean. You see some fragments when moving the windows around but nothing that a normal computer user would even notice and nothing that bothers me (.2 seconds of fragmentation when moving application from one screen to the other).
So, since everything else is the same and the unity/coherence feature is better in fusion than parallels I'm probably going to make the switch. Any others virtualization users have any comments to agree or disagree with my decision??
Comments
There has been a lot a parallels vs. boot camp discussions and probably some parallels vs. fusion but as VMWare just released fusion 2.0 I thought it was a good time to compare the two virtualization options (I know there are others but I don't think they are mainstream, or they don't advertise well).
I have used parallels on my desktop at work for over a year and on my laptop at home since it's initial release. It has always done great, I never used coherence because I generally had a second monitor connected when using it and I just used windows on one monitor and OS X on the other.
I have had no issues with parallels whatsoever, I use Visual Studio 2008, SQL Management Studio, an SAP product (and some AD management stuff) in it all without a hitch. I have a 24" iMac with a 22" monitor to the left of it. I was recently working on a long project that I had to develop in windows and I found it annoying that I had my head turned to the left (the 2nd monitor is to the left) all day. I decided to give coherence a try, I messed with it for a couple hours but didn't like the way it handled the task bar and moving applications between multiple monitors, it wasn't very clean and it wasn't worth the hassle.
VMWare released fusion 2.0 recently so I gave it a try, I imported my parallels VM (took about 2.5 hours, 90GB disk). I got it up and running in full screen mode and didn't see much of a difference. The speed was similar to parallels (slow to start apps in both at first, after about ten minutes it was fine) and there were no major features that I needed that parallels didn't have (note, that *I* needed). Then I switched to unity and it automatically placed my task bar on the bottom of the second monitor (just like in full screen mode) and I was able to move my applications from screen to screen with no difficulty and it looked very clean. You see some fragments when moving the windows around but nothing that a normal computer user would even notice and nothing that bothers me (.2 seconds of fragmentation when moving application from one screen to the other).
So, since everything else is the same and the unity/coherence feature is better in fusion than parallels I'm probably going to make the switch. Any others virtualization users have any comments to agree or disagree with my decision??
From what I've read both are good products.
As far as performance is concerned, have you enabled fusion to use both cores of the cpu? It can cause problems for the host os if you've only got a dual core machine but I've not noticed any problems. I do this on my MBP and the speed improvement is pretty impressive. If you only do limited work in your VM and shut it down when done then I would give it a try.
Overall I find Fusion to be an excellent product but I actually use it less than I thought I would. I really loathe working in a windows environment.
Unfortunately I can't only open it when I need it at work, I use it throughout the day. I could easily just log into a server to do what I need to do, but using the VM is faster. If someone would release a good mac alternative to SQL Management Studio I could be in windows much less, unfortunately the stuff that is out there isn't great and I don't expect much considering it is a microsoft product (not saying MS makes bad products, just saying that it is doubtful that a good mac client will come out for any windows server app). The best one I found is SQLGrinder but the procedure editing functionality is a pain, you have to script it as new then change it to alter, while that is only one step it gets annoying. Also, it doesn't return messages from SQL, just no result set. So you can't print message for debuging in sql script,, SQLMS tells you exactly where the problem is instead of having to search through it for a syntax typo too. But ... back to virtualization.
No, I only have it using one core.
Unfortunately I can't only open it when I need it at work, I use it throughout the day. I could easily just log into a server to do what I need to do, but using the VM is faster. If someone would release a good mac alternative to SQL Management Studio I could be in windows much less, unfortunately the stuff that is out there isn't great and I don't expect much considering it is a microsoft product (not saying MS makes bad products, just saying that it is doubtful that a good mac client will come out for any windows server app). The best one I found is SQLGrinder but the procedure editing functionality is a pain, you have to script it as new then change it to alter, while that is only one step it gets annoying. Also, it doesn't return messages from SQL, just no result set. So you can't print message for debuging in sql script,, SQLMS tells you exactly where the problem is instead of having to search through it for a syntax typo too. But ... back to virtualization.
From what I've read, you probably shouldn't enable both cores. Wait until you get a quad core iMac.
1) Invoking a shortcut doesn't always work. I highest a query and press CRTL+E a lot in SQL MS. I noticed that about half the time it would just overwrite my text with an 'e', like it didn't recognize the CRTL modifier. While continuing to hold control I could press Z to undo the overwrite and then E again and it would work fine 80% of the time when it didn't work. This worked perfectly in parallels. Is there is something I can do to fix that or is it a bug?
2) Since coherence in parallels wasn't as good as in fusion this is still a positive for fusion but something I wish worked properly ... expose. If I use expose about 50% of the time the windows windows show up as the last windows application used. So if I was in our ERP and invoked expose the other apps would should-up just like the ERP. If you move your mouse over the window it shows the correct application name and clicking on reveals the application, but it is still annoying.
So I'm back to parallels for the day and will report on the difference. Thus far it seems like nothing assuming that coherence continues to work well.