Update: I’ve written an updated post on Parallels 3.0 Build 5160, released on 9/11/07.
Things are heating up on the Mac VMware front. Last week Parallels released version 3.0 of their desktop software for Macintosh and VMware released Beta 4 of their Fusion product for Macintosh. And today, VMware announced the pricing for VMware Fusion will be same as Parallels: $79.95 (only $39.95 if you pre-order before the final release).
I’ve been a Parallels customer since the beta of their Desktop software first came about in April 2006 and have upgraded to 3.0. I am also using the VMware Fusion Beta 4.
Up until these last round of releases, I’ve been using Fusion for running Ubuntu Linux 7.04 and Parallels for running Windows XP SP2.
Windows Integration
With Desktop 3.0, Parallels added quite a bit of Windows integration points. For starters, in Windows when you right-click on a file and select Open With, you can pick from a list of both Windows and Mac applications. If you choose a Mac application, it starts in OS X with the file. It’s very slick. You are supposed to also be able to do this on the OS X side where you can specify a Windows application using Open With and it will open in Windows with Parallels, but I have not gotten this to work yet.
Parallels seems to set up shared folders between OS X and Windows quite nicely. Fusion seems to require you to do this manually.
Fusion lets you access Windows programs from its Applications menu. Parallels let you run programs from its Applications menu or the dock icon.
Coherence vs. Unity
Coherence is Parallels term for its ability to hide the Windows desktop and make it appear as if your Windows applications are running directly in OS X. It works very well, although since I have dual monitors I usually just run Parallels in full screen on the second monitor. Dual monitor support in Parallels just makes both your monitors work as one giant monitor which I find a bit weird.
Unity is Fusion’s term for Coherence. It also works very well, although not with Windows Vista, yet. In fact, even though it is still in beta, Unity looks better than Coherence. Windows applications have a drop-shadow so they look more “native” on OS X. They also seem to move around more easily without any of the jumpiness that Parallels has. And a big thing is that the Windows applications are treated independently. With Parallels, when you click on any Windows application, all your Windows applications are brought to the front. With Unity, Fusion just brings the window you clicked to the front. Unity doesn’t really work with dual monitors either.
Linux Support
Before Desktop 3.0, Parallels Linux support was very limited. I’ve now installed Ubuntu in Parallels Desktop 3.0, installed the tools without a problem and it is working wonderfully. The Parallels tools only give you mouse and video integration, but that is enough for me.
I had previously been using VMware Fusion for this. It also works just fine with Linux.
BootCamp support
My BootCamp partition is set up with Windows Vista Ultimate. With Desktop 3.0, Parallels now supports BootCamp partitions, so I gave it a try. It took a while for Parallels to install all the stuff it needed into the partition, but once it did so Vista started up in the VM just fine. There was an incompatibility with the new BootCamp 1.3 drivers and the initial release of Parallels Desktop 3.0 (Build 4124). Luckily for me I hadn’t updated my BootCamp drivers yet. To their credit Parallels has just released build 4128 which is supposed to fix this driver incompatibility.
Alas, I have not tested the VMware BootCamp capability. I really don’t want to screw up the partition since it is working now. Perhaps someone braver than I can comment on this?
Vista support
Neither Parallels nor Fusion support Vista Aero effects, but otherwise Vista seems to work fine on both. Vista is a bit of a CPU hog, though, so you’re probably better off with using XP in the VM.
Snapshots
Desktop 3.0 added a Snapshot feature which lets you save a copy of your VM at a point in time. You can create a snapshot for a stopped or running VM. When I created a snapshot of my Windows XP VM, it took about 25MB. Parallels also has a nice UI for managing the snapshots.
VMware also has snapshots, but they seem less robust. It appears that there can only be one snapshot available at a time and I was unable to find where the snapshot files are stored. Parallels lets you have any number of snapshots and they can all be managed nicely through the UI.
Other features
I use Windows and Linux for work-related tasks so I really don’t care much about USB 2.0 or 3D graphics support. I will say that graphics on everything I’ve tried work fast on both Fusion and Parallels, but then I haven’t tried any games (does FreeCell count?). I’ve tried a USB camera that did not have an OS X driver and it worked fine on both as well.
Fusion can emulate two processors and Parallels cannot, but I don’t find this to be a useful feature.
Conclusion
It looks like I”ll be sticking with Parallels. I’ve already paid out my money and it doesn’t have any significant problems that warrant me also using VMware Fusion. If I hadn’t already purchased Parallels though, I would probably go with Fusion just because of VMware’s stellar reputation in this space, aggressive pricing and the fact that its VMs directly work with VMware Player, Workstation and Server on Windows and Linux.
June 12th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
[…] developer Paul Lefebvre has a tidy comparison up on his blog between VMware’s Fusion and competitor Parallels Desktop. Both products let […]
June 13th, 2007 at 7:11 am
so you don’t have the framebuffer issues in ubuntu linux as discussed here? i would be very surprsed…
http://forum.parallels.com/thread12670.html
also, it is good you haven’t tried vmware bootcamp. parallels just confirmed that this is not a good idea:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?p=66218#post66218
June 13th, 2007 at 7:37 am
@bnz: When I log out of Ubuntu I get the scrambled screen mentioned in the post you reference. I just “Stop” the VM at that point and all is well. Otherwise Ubuntu works just fine with no graphical glitches.
I also saw that Parallels confirmed not try both VMware and Parallels on the same BootCamp partition. I dodged a bullet there, I guess!
June 13th, 2007 at 8:13 am
> I was unable to find where the snapshot files are stored
The snapshot files are stored inside the vmwarevm bundle - you can peer inside by ctrl-clicking and selecting “Show Package Contents”
A feature that you missed that you might be interested in is that Fusion can accelerate paravirtualized guests (AFAIK the only stock distro that has this is Ubuntu 7.04, but that’s you). To enable this, edit the vmx file for that VM and add the line
vmi.present = “TRUE”
June 13th, 2007 at 8:34 am
@Eric: Thanks for the tidbits. I had noticed that the files are all in the VM bundle (at least for newly created VMs). My XP VM was created before Fusion used the VM bundles so it it stored in a folder. The problem I had is that I couldn’t really determine which of the many files in the folder were the ones for the snapshot. I’ll have to try a snapshot with a bundle VM to see if it is easier to identify.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
>Parallels seems to set up shared folders between OS X and Windows quite nicely. Fusion seems >to require you to do this manually.
When I used this feature on previous builds I found the transfer speeds to be very slow. Has this changed? For instance, imagine wanting to burn a DVD using the Mac side while the iso file is living on the Windows side (or vice versa). You’d want the transfer to be fairly fast but I did not find this to be the case in the past. Shared files seems to be behaving in a slow networking fashion or am I missing something?
philip
June 14th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
@pmcd: I just did a quick test. I copied a 270MB file from Parallels to Mac OS X. When dragging it from Windows Explorer to the FInder, the copy took about 2 minutes. If I opened up the Parallels Shared Folder within Windows Explorer and then did the copy from within Parallels it only took about 20 seconds.
June 16th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
“When dragging it from Windows Explorer to the FInder, the copy took about 2 minutes. If I opened up the Parallels Shared Folder within Windows Explorer and then did the copy from within Parallels it only took about 20 seconds.”
This is interesting. So say you are in coherence mode and you want to burn a 2gig file on the Mac. The transfer rate would be too slow (roughly 20 minutes just to copy) to do it in real time. When you drag a file from the PC side to say Toast how would you tell it to use the shared folder?
My problem in all of this is there doesn’t seem to be transparent drag and drop of files between the PC and Mac sides at a reasonable speed (in coherence). I don’t know if Fusion is better at this. I just upgraded Parallels to 3.0 and I’ll have to play with it some more. It just seems that coherence makes things more confusing in terms of moving files between systems. For small files this is not an issue but the 2 minutes versus 20 secs is quite the difference.
My original comment was misleading. It wasn’t so much shared folders I had in mind but the general way one moved files back and forth. Sorry about that…
pmcd
June 20th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I find the USB 2.0 support crucial; it allows me to run software for devices where there is no (easy) way to use the Mac, stuff like biz card scanners. Parallels does this just fine (I have not tested Fusion, like you I went with Parallels early on and have not felt a need to switch).
I haven’t gotten the “launch windows app from macos finder” feature to work either. Parallels will launch the app but the doc won’t load. I’m running Office 2007, tho, so that might be the issue.
Thanks for the review.
June 21st, 2007 at 4:43 am
hi,
A interesting featire of vmware and that perhaps parallels does not have is the ability to split virtual harddisk in 2GB files.. this for example permits to store them on FAT32 filesystem
can you confirm me that paralles does not have it?
thx
June 21st, 2007 at 11:54 am
@pmcd: The shared folders show up in both OS X (to see Windows) and in Windows (to see OS X). You can move files between these folders very quickly. I haven’t tried burning a DVD that way, but I do frequently download large ISO files from MSDN and they move around fast enough for me.
@carlo: As far as I know, Parallels does not have the ability to split VM files into 2GB chunks.
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:38 am
Are vmware fusion virtual machines compatible with vmware workstation 5.5 or vmware server?
if so I must buy vmware fusion.
it work great for me.. very fast.. I have gentoo VM and windows XP… dual core CPU support..
works sweet.
I’m a vmware user for many years… since version 1.. used vmware server on linux cubes too.
it’s a piece of software worth the money.
no doubt…
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 am
@carlo: It turns out I am mistaken about the split VM ability. I hadn’t created a new VM so I missed it, but you can specify to split a VM hard disk into 2GB chunks when you specify the VM size.
@Frederico: Yes, the Fusion VM formats are compatible with VMware Workstation and Server. It’s a pretty compelling feature if you already have an investment in VMware products.
July 6th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Thanks for the review, you make a lot of really good points. I also have tried both products, but I found myself very disappointed by Parallels customer support and upgrade policies.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Even though it’s only been 7 months since I bought Parallels,and the software itself works fine enough for me, their customer support (for the individual user at least) is terrible, they have weird distribution policies internationally with companies like Avanquest who — as I’ve found out — have terrible customer support as well, and their upgrading policy is a mess; I purchased it from Avanquest UK when they had their offer in December 06 of free 1 year upgrades, only to later be told by Avanquest (by email, after email 3 times with no response, because they charge 60p/minute for phone) that it doesn’t apply to the date I bought it on (which is an outright lie). You can’t get anyone to seem to help you. This is enough for me to consider moving, though I am happy with the product.
July 19th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I recently upgraded to Parallels 3.0 for the specific purpose of using my BootCamp partition as a VM. Well, I have had nothing but problems. Parallels has a) blown out my entire Windows partition once, b) continuously corrupts its own registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software, and c) the support site and forums are incredibly shallow in terms of quality information. Additionally they do not provide ANY free phone support, even as a new customer. They expect you to shell out $30 for each incident. That’s just asinine for a consumer product. I’m ashamed I wasted money on this upgrade. Looks like I’ll be buying Fusion and recommending my colleagues to do the same…
July 19th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
For clarification…the recurring registry corruption results in being unable to boot the VM until the registry folder is manually deleted in Regedit in Boot Camp. LAME.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Parallels has worked fine for me, but the upgrade to version 3 fails and now amount of email to customer support has received any support.
So I’m stuck on verion 2, or left with a reinstall.. very tempted to re-install using fusion instead.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm
I have bought fusion. The main reason is I feel Parallels takes too much CPU time when the virtual machine is almost completely idle. VMware seems better at this point. Have other users experienced this, or is it just because I have not tested it heavily?
August 9th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
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September 21st, 2007 at 11:12 am
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January 30th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Does anyone know if Fusion works with dual monitors?
By that I mean that most of my apps will be in MAC but a couple are needed in windows. If I have Dual Monitors selected and active on the MAC os, can I run Fusion and put windows aps via Unity (In their own floating window) on my MAC’s 2nd monitor. Also, does Fusion have any trouble with a Wacom Tablet as an additional input device? Thanks!
March 28th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Yes, Fusion’s Unity feature works with dual monitors to some extent. You can only use Unity on one monitor at a time, though. There is no way to move a Windows window from one monitor to the other.