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vchalupa

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 24, 2008
77
0
Which is better to use? I understand you don't need to reboot to use Parallels or Vmware but is it fully functional? And do either of these kill the performance of the system?

And what's the difference between Parallels and Vmware?
 
Which is better to use? I understand you don't need to reboot to use Parallels or Vmware but is it fully functional? And do either of these kill the performance of the system?

And what's the difference between Parallels and Vmware?

I can't speak for VMware, but my Parallels works great. There is a small drop in system performance as each OS takes a processor on my laptop. I also wouldn't play a heavy game in XP with parallels (reboot into XP instead). However, I love being able to have both OSes open and assist users in either OS.

I own a palm Tungsten 3E and it has never synched well under OSX. I find the native calendar and sych software works better than iSynch. Being able to quickly jump over to Parallels is great for this.

The best part of Parallels is being able to drag files between OSes.
 
Which is better to use? I understand you don't need to reboot to use Parallels or Vmware but is it fully functional? And do either of these kill the performance of the system?

And what's the difference between Parallels and Vmware?

yes, you get less performance with parallels/vmware...

its ok for simple things but if you play games use bootcamp
 
I can't speak for VMware, but my Parallels works great. There is a small drop in system performance as each OS takes a processor on my laptop.

When you say there is a drop in performance, is that only when you're running Parallels or is it the over all performance? I plan to use this on a new MBP!
 
And can you launch the same OS and harddrive partition if you use both Parallels and Bootcamp?

I'm sorry, I'm not completely sure how this works. I'm new to Mac and the software! :)
 
for lightweight apps i love parallels desktop, just takes a few clicks and you have 2 OS's running simultaneously.

Bootcamp for heavy apps, games etc. I chose parallels because you can use your existing bootcamp partition. I don't know if you can do that with vm if so somebody please confirm
 
When you say there is a drop in performance, is that only when you're running Parallels or is it the over all performance? I plan to use this on a new MBP!

It's overall performance in both OSes. Don't forget that the computer is now running two operating systems at the same time, plus any apps that you have open in either system.

My Macbook handles it quite well, so the pro should do a great job at it.
 
When you say there is a drop in performance, is that only when you're running Parallels or is it the over all performance? I plan to use this on a new MBP!

The drop in performance only happens when you run parallels. The reason for that is that you run both os's simultaneously. (double the resources are needed). if you shut your virtual machine (parallels desktop) down, everything goes back to normal.
 
I can't tell anything about Fusion - I never tried it, but parallels works great. I use two months only but it works brilliantly! All only windows progs work without any problem and as for speed - I'm glad!
 
you can't compare bootcamp to virtual machines... they have two separate goals.

If you want to use two OSs at the same time, go virtual. If you just want to run one OS at a time, use bootcamp.
 
I use VMWare Fusion to run Windows and love it - I've never had any problems with it. I don't know from experience but I've heard Parallels is slower than Fusion? I dunno..

I think the deciding factor is the intensity of what you'll be doing in Windows: Gaming, video editing, any hours-long stuff, then bootcamp would be the way to go.

I use Windows solely for testing in IE and some keywords apps, so Fusion has been fantastic.
 
It really depends on what you are trying to do in Windows. If the apps you need to run are not extremely intensive, the virtualization products should be fine. Personally, I've found Parallels to be quite a bit faster than Fusion (even when two CPUs are activated in Fusion). YMMV.
 
Sorry to drag up an old thread but I didn't think it was worth creating a new one.

I understand that using Parallels overall performance is slowed as each OS is using one CPU core. Does this also apply to RAM? On my system will I have to allocate 1gb to Windows and 1gb to OSX? Also, if I am done with using Windows, can I simply close down Parallels in order regain that extra core and 1gb for OSX, or do you have to restart?

Thanks.
 
think of it as running itunes, but having the ability to control the amount of ram or the cores that itunes can use when you run it. Closing down the program will release the resources back to the OS.
 
Sorry to drag up an old thread but I didn't think it was worth creating a new one.

I understand that using Parallels overall performance is slowed as each OS is using one CPU core. Does this also apply to RAM? On my system will I have to allocate 1gb to Windows and 1gb to OSX? Also, if I am done with using Windows, can I simply close down Parallels in order regain that extra core and 1gb for OSX, or do you have to restart?

Thanks.

I really wouldn't worry about the slowed performance unless you have minimal RAM. I ended up buying VMware Fusion because my university gave me a discount and it runs great. I have set files to download and convert...because I don't have a video converter for OS X and I have let that run while I do my other work. I've never experienced a significant drop in performance. Earlier today I was streaming live video to the OSX partition while downloading things to my Windows partition via VMware. I have 4GB of RAM in my MBP but even if I had 2 GB I think it would run fine. Unless you're doing a significant amount of labor on each partition, I don't think you'll experience that big a drop in performance.
 
I understand that using Parallels overall performance is slowed as each OS is using one CPU core. Does this also apply to RAM? On my system will I have to allocate 1gb to Windows and 1gb to OSX? Also, if I am done with using Windows, can I simply close down Parallels in order regain that extra core and 1gb for OSX, or do you have to restart?

Thanks.

Yes, that is exactly correct. You can specify specifically when creating the VM how much RAM you want to allocate to each OS as well. It works pretty well and when you close the VM you gain all of the resources again.
 
I just bought a new MBP and installed Vista on 70gigs of hd space. I think it sucks. VM ware is insanely slow and bootcamp is also a *****-fest.

My Office doesn't work. My heavy apps freeze everything up. I'm reinstalling drivers all the time in hopes that something will finally work. Still, my trackpad doesn't right-click even though I have programmed it to do so. I'm missing a lot of drivers or something and can't seem to find anything.

quite frankly, I'm kinda pissed I spent so much money and can't get anything to actually work. Going to the apple store is a full day's trip for me.

Not an easy transition for me, at all. I'm about ready to throw this thing against the wall. I'm hoping it's user-error and I'll finally find the tools I need to make it all work. They sure as hell weren't included in the driver cd.
 
I just bought a new MBP and installed Vista on 70gigs of hd space. I think it sucks. VM ware is insanely slow and bootcamp is also a *****-fest.

My Office doesn't work. My heavy apps freeze everything up. I'm reinstalling drivers all the time in hopes that something will finally work. Still, my trackpad doesn't right-click even though I have programmed it to do so. I'm missing a lot of drivers or something and can't seem to find anything.

quite frankly, I'm kinda pissed I spent so much money and can't get anything to actually work. Going to the apple store is a full day's trip for me.

Not an easy transition for me, at all. I'm about ready to throw this thing against the wall. I'm hoping it's user-error and I'll finally find the tools I need to make it all work. They sure as hell weren't included in the driver cd.

Did you use the driver disk that was provided to you with the laptop? You have to use those drivers and you'll get everything to work. Also...I installed XP on my bootcamp partition because Vista is a summon from Hell. I've used Vista and I can't stand it so I decided to go with XP. I experienced a LOT of problems with the bootcamp process. Hang in there, I realized half of what I did was human error and the other half still doesn't make sense to me. Also, I'd recommend you upgrading to VMware Fusion 2.1 software if you haven't already done that. It's a free upgrade once you register your license.

Hope that helps! :)
 
I have installed the drivers twice/repair.

Where did you find the fusion 2.1? I can only find 2.0 as their latest release.

I might just clean install everything over again.
 
I have installed the drivers twice/repair.

Where did you find the fusion 2.1? I can only find 2.0 as their latest release.

I might just clean install everything over again.

**Sorry my mistake. It is 2.0. I meant the upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0!**
 
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