While waiting on my RMBP to arrive I need to decide which of these to use to run Windows. I already own VMWare Fusion, but I am hearing that it's not supporting the Retina display very well? I will be running Windows quite a bit and need something that will run well under Mac OS X and the new display.
Any recommendations?
I use/own both VMWare and Parallels and I have found Parallels to be exceptional. I'm currently running the beta of the next version of VMWare and the current version of Parallels. I find that Parallels is much faster than VMware on both the current version as well as the beta.
I use VM's for the following:
Windows 2008 R2 Server
MS SQL Server
MySQL
IIS
Windows 7 Pro 64Bit
Windows 8 Preview
Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2012 (whatever the current RC is)
I also tend to use multiple VMs at the same time. If you look at my system specs below, I have had the best performance with Parallels.
People have stated that VMWare is slower but more stable but Parallels has been just as stable as VMWare. I also find that Parallels puts out new versions much faster. They were first to support the MBPr.
While working on an OpenGL application, VMWare just could not display it correctly but Parallels could. The application work great on a 'real' Windows machine, Parallels, but VMWare had trouble. In fairness, this was with VMWare 3.x so I did not try it under 4.x.
YMMV. However, having an SSD and 16 Gb of RAM is a must for high-end VM work in my experience. The SSD really offsets any disk thrashing caused by the VMs under OS X. When I had the stock HD, the system could really bog down during dish thrashing with multiple VMs. Under the SSD, you don't even notice it.
Did you know you can buy Parallels for $29 if you own VMware? They have a kind of hidden page here:
http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/vmwareoffer/form/
For real world use, I would own both and that way you are covered no matter what.
Good Luck!
-P