Windows 7 installed. Add Fusion or Parallels?

Yes, both Fusion and Parallels allow you to run your Boot Camp partition and process is fairly simple and straight forward to connect

Short answer - no. You'll have to install Win7 as a virtual machine under either Fusion or Parallels

I've never understood why anyone uses Bootcamp to get Windows up and running when there are software alternatives that allow that without requiring a reboot.

I've run VMWARE Fusion for years without incident.

VMWare is really nice, it hardly taxes the CPU on my 8gb RAM MBA, and I get around 9 hours of battery However, I have read some reviews saying that Parallels is better for gaming,

Bending Pixels said:

Short answer - no. You'll have to install Win7 as a virtual machine under either Fusion or Parallels

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That may be short, but it's wrong. Parallels can run his Boot Camp partition without modification. See http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v6/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/23112.htm

chabig said:

That may be short, but it's wrong. Parallels can run his Boot Camp partition without modification. See http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v6/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/23112.htm

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I stand corrected.

I use parallels desktop 8, have used both (shortly used fusion) parallels is MUCH better. faster nicer etc. go for that.

Z400Racer37 said:

I use parallels desktop 8, have used both (shortly used fusion) parallels is MUCH better. faster nicer etc. go for that.

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Fun fact: Parallels is faster than fusion because parallels doesn't have to simulate the computer processor, unlike fusion.

wbensky said:

Fun fact: Parallels is faster than fusion because parallels doesn't have to simulate the computer processor, unlike fusion.

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Yet Fusion typically is a bit more stable and has superior tech support. Plus no ads as you start the product up.

Bottom line, its a personal preference, I like Fusion because of the stability, I ran into kernel panics on OSX and BSODs from time to time with Parallels (a couple of versions ago). When I reach out to Fusions tech support I usually get a response within the day.

Parallels is very popular because its usually faster and they typically add new features quicker then VMware does.

wbensky said:

Fun fact: Parallels is faster than fusion because parallels doesn't have to simulate the computer processor, unlike fusion.

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This is false.

Both VMware Fusion and Parallels use hardware virtualization.

I think both are capable of virtualizing Intel-on-Intel without virtualization instructions (or they were in the past).

Even VirtualBox, the mostly free, mostly open-source offering from Oracle, uses virtualization in hardware.

You may be thinking of an emulator, e.g., QEMU or PearPC from the old PowerPC days.

For the few apps I need on Win, I use a virtual and find both Parallels and Fusion quite capable. Gamers are far better off to do the boot deal rather than go virtual. I say this based on several friends that do some regular gaming and all seem to say the same thing that virtual is not the way to go for games.

Just more peanuts from the gallery.

Communicator said:

To save the need for reboots, is it possible, and an easy process, to install VMWare or Parallels without the need to re-install Windows 7 or change the partitions.

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http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html

The Perfect Complement to Boot Camp

No more choosing between Windows or Mac at startup, VMware Fusion lets you run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side directly from your existing Boot Camp partition.

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http://www.parallels.com/landingpage/dskd88/

Use the Boot Camp partition as a bootable volume disk in Parallels Desktop to run high-performance PC-only software at full speed in a Mac’s native hardware environment, access all of your system settings, peripheral devices, files and folders in your Parallels Desktop virtual machine.

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...and yes, it's very easy. I've done so with both. Just make sure that you're set up to run your Boot Camp partition under whichever solution you choose versus importing. Importing will create a VM copy. I unintentionally did that and didn't realize until I noticed that there was some divergence between Boot Camp and Fusion.

hakr100 said:

I've never understood why anyone uses Bootcamp to get Windows up and running when there are software alternatives that allow that without requiring a reboot.

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Overhead. Don't assume your preferences and priorities to be universal no matter what the topic. This is covered in every thread that discusses Boot Camp versus Fusion & Parallels. If one sets up Boot Camp first and then uses Fusion or Parallels to run the Boot Camp partition then one has the option of using either solution as needed. For resource intensive gaming I Boot Camp. For less demanding usage I use Fusion.

hakr100 said:

I've run VMWARE Fusion for years without incident.

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I ran Parallels for years without incident. One data point is never a trend.

Z400Racer37 said:

I use parallels desktop 8, have used both (shortly used fusion) parallels is MUCH better. faster nicer etc. go for that.

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Better is always highly subjective no matter what the topic. There are pros and cons to each solution -- just like anything else. Ads with Parallels made it a non-starter for me. YMMV as with any subjective matter.

phrehdd said:

I say this based on several friends that do some regular gaming and all seem to say the same thing that virtual is not the way to go for games.

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Yup, you don't get something for nothing. Virtual solutions will have overhead associated with them. Additionally, resources are split between the host and guest OS's.

isomorphic said:

This is false.

Both VMware Fusion and Parallels use hardware virtualization.

I think both are capable of virtualizing Intel-on-Intel without virtualization instructions (or they were in the past).

Even VirtualBox, the mostly free, mostly open-source offering from Oracle, uses virtualization in hardware.

You may be thinking of an emulator, e.g., QEMU or PearPC from the old PowerPC days.

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I'm afraid I'll have to disagree based on my experiences. If you run Windows virtually in OS X using Parallels, and you go to the system information, it will show the exact CPU model that the Mac has. The CPU is in no way emulated, Parallels uses it directly. Add more processors/threads to the VM and it will still show as being the same model, but more processors show up in Task Manager.

Every time I've used VMs on VMware it seems to just come up as 'unknown processor @3.2GHz' or something like that.

But if it's different in the newer versions of VMware then I stand corrected.

Processor shows up.

hakr100 said:

Processor shows up.

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I stand corrected, thanks for the clarification.