Parallels 5 or VMWare Fusion

[archdelux]

I am considering getting a MBP soon and was initially intending to just use it to run Windows natively; however, I came across these programs and was wondering if there was any disadvantage to running Parallels/Fusion--does it significantly slow down you computer, or can a high-end 13" MBP handle it pretty well?

Also, is there anything that I CAN'T do using these programs that I would be able to do in Windows? It seems that this is the best of both worlds in the sense that I won't get the disadvantages in solely running Windows via bootcamp (ie trackpad issues, etc), whereas I can run all my windows programs/etc.

Lastly, is it possible to configure it to have a somewhat windows-like interface while still enjoying features like expose/etc?

Thanks

 

[ayeying]

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=011016...e:forums.macrumors.com&hl=en&as_qdr=all&meta=

All your answers.

 

[rovitotv]

The key to good VM performance....

You should have at least 4 GB of RAM, with only 2 GB of RAM VM's are slow. With either product you can do just about anything except run graphics quickly, so games don't work as good as running them natively. The nice thing about both of these products is you can have a bootcamp partition and still use that same partition in your virtual machine. I use this feature to run bootcamp for game playing then I use my virtual machine for just about anything else. Since I don't play games that often this method works well for me.

"Lastly, is it possible to configure it to have a somewhat windows-like interface while still enjoying features like expose/etc?"
Fusion has a interface feature called unity which makes your Windows programs look just like Mac programs.

I hope this helps.

 

[archdelux]

"Lastly, is it possible to configure it to have a somewhat windows-like interface while still enjoying features like expose/etc?"
Fusion has a interface feature called unity which makes your Windows programs look just like Mac programs.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for your input - it certainly was helpful. Regarding my question you quoted above..I was actually wondering the opposite of what you said...ie can I make the interface look like windows (ie I find it extremely annoying that I cannot see the names of various windows in the taskbar at the bottom of the screen in mac os. For example, I like to see that I have 2 chrome windows open and the title of the website visible. Also, I like that it informs me by flashing when someone sends me a chat in gmail, etc.. wheras it seems that in Mac OS, unless I actually check the window that is running in the background, I could never know if I have a chat pending..) - is something like this possible?