I haven’t written about it for a while, but I am still heavily relying on virtualization on my Macbook to do almost everything. There are several work programs that must run in Windows, plus Quicken for my personal stuff, etc. I am sorry to admit that I upgraded to Parallels 3.0 right before VMware announced the pricing and pre-ordering of Fusion back in June. When VMware announced pre-order of Fusion I also got that. Lets face it i haven’t settled on either product just yet.
I have been using Parallels since they announced their product, and upgraded since I couldn’t wait for the final version of Fusion. Parallels 3.0 has some nice features, like multiple snapshots (like VMware Workstation, but not Fusion), and the ability to open windows files from the Mac OS. That is the dilemma. Now that Fusion is out, I am running it. I will admit it is noticeably faster (to me) than Parallels. That and the fact that i can use all the existing VM’s i have (and i have allot) is very compelling. I just wish Fusion could do some of the things Parallels can do (multiple snapshots and launching programs from the Mac OS). If it had those two functions it would be the perfect product (for now). Even with those shortcomings, i will say that Fusion is the only virtualization software currently running on my Macbook. Parallels has a new beta out that addresses some of their performance issues and other features so i may switch back, who knows.
With all my existing VM’s, my use of VMware Workstation on windows, and ESX server at work I am firmly wanting the decision to use Fusion over Parallels to be good a no brainer! Right now that isn’t the case, but the performance difference (to me) keeps it running on my Mac.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Macbook, Parallels Desktop, virtualization, VMware, VMware Fusion