Parallels vs. BootCamp

sansa11` · December 31, 2007 3:27PM

I have heard that both Parallels and BootCamp are good programs to run Windows on a Mac.

But, I have recently found out that there is also something called Fusion that also works.

Which is better? Parallels,BootCamp, or Fusion?

My guess is that Parallels works the best. At least that's my opinion just from

browsing around and comparing the differences.

As I don't even own a Mac (January 2008), I can't really say.

I can only depend on your opinions.

mydo · December 31, 2007 5:41PM

My understanding is that Parallels can boot from a boot camp image. So there's no either/or there.

buddha · December 31, 2007 6:10PM

People compare them too much in my opinion. Boot camp is for running another operating system at native speed independently. Parallels is an emulator for non-3d, non-video, and non-intensive Windows only apps.

compulsiveguile · January 7, 2008 4:52PM

It really depends on what you're using it for. Understand that with Boot Camp, you have to reboot into it from OS X. Doing this dedicates all your resources to Windows (If it helps, it's like starting up a non-mac laptop. If you boot into Boot Camp, you'd have no idea aside from the apple symbol on your case that's it's a Mac computer... besides being more stable perhaps

)

Parallels and VMWare Fusion let you run Windows without the reboot and are more or less the same thing . I'm sure there are minor technical differences that I don't know about, but they perform similarly. I personally have Fusion (it was $40 cheaper than Parallels), and I have no complaints. Both can use your Boot Camp partition to run Windows. That means that you can have Boot Camp AND Fusion or Parallels. They also both have the kool feature of allowing you to bring Windows apps to your OS X desktop so to speak (see my article here for a little more in depth view of Fusion).

Does that clarify/help?

Parallels vs. BootCamp

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