Parallels invasiveness VS Fusion inferior performance

[Muffin87]

From what I gathered, during their histories, Parallels has performed better than Fusion, yet there there's still quite a debate over which is better: fusion users aren't a niche.
If I'm correct, benchmarks reveled that Parallels just performs better, then why do people still use Fusion?

I switched to Fusion years ago, when I realized that Parallels had installed artificial connections within my network preferences pane, and hated it.
I believe there are still some features for which Fusion in unique and some users might prefer it over parallels for them.

Does unique features justify the popularity of Fusion? Or it just isn't true that on average during years of development parallels has always performed better than fusion?

I gathered that Parallels 7 still performs better than Fusion, am I right?
Is parallels still as system-invasive as it was before?
I do think that installing artificial connections is invasive, I liked the fact that Fusion installation was drag-and-drop and always distrust programs that can be installed only through installers (I'm not talking about Operative Systems of course).

What's you guys' opinion on this?

 

[RightMACatU]

Dear Muffin,

There are soooo many comparisons articles (and MacRumors threads) out there that I stopped reading. They both have pros and cons and for me it came down to price: $42 for Fusion vs $80 for Parallels.

They both do the job well and the $42 price tag did it for me.

 

[jcpb]

From what I gathered, during their histories, Parallels has performed better than Fusion, yet there there's still quite a debate over which is better: fusion users aren't a niche.
If I'm correct, benchmarks reveled that Parallels just performs better, then why do people still use Fusion?

I switched to Fusion years ago, when I realized that Parallels had installed artificial connections within my network preferences pane, and hated it.
I believe there are still some features for which Fusion in unique and some users might prefer it over parallels for them.

Does unique features justify the popularity of Fusion? Or it just isn't true that on average during years of development parallels has always performed better than fusion?

I gathered that Parallels 7 still performs better than Fusion, am I right?
Is parallels still as system-invasive as it was before?
I do think that installing artificial connections is invasive, I liked the fact that Fusion installation was drag-and-drop and always distrust programs that can be installed only through installers (I'm not talking about Operative Systems of course).

What's you guys' opinion on this?

Performance or stability.

Pick one.

I'm willing to trade a slower VM for something more stable, then again if I really want to play games I can simply run Bootcamp on its own, which meant all the performance enhancements offered by Parallels were rendered irrelevant.

 

[ayeying]

I find both Parallels and VMware Fusion to be about the same speed on average use. In 3D performance, Parallels wins. In stability, Fusion wins. In easy to use, Fusion also wins. I have licenses for both, but personally I use VMware Fusion while my dad uses Parallels.

It's all personal preference.

 

[yezza]

I own both, but haven't used Fusion for over a year. I (disappointingly) had to purchase Parallels 7 to run on Mountain Lion.

I generally only rely on a VM for CAD app SolidWorks, for which performance relies heavily upon CPU and graphics power (openGL 2), and Parallels leads by a large margin in my experience.

 

[throAU]

I use fusion because it is compatible with my VMDKs on ESX server, Workstation, etc.

It is also more stable and reliable. I've seen various bugs with Parallels involving disk corruption. That simply is not acceptable for me, whatever the frame rate difference.

As above, if i want to run games i have a console, bootcamp and a dedicated PC.


If absolute max 3d performance is not critically important, try virtualbox. It is FREE and works pretty well.

 

[tillsbury]

I ran Fusion for a month, but when the reminders turned up to buy it the website wouldn't let me (didn't go to a cart, told me to ring or go to a shop). I tried Parallels but they never sent me an email with the trial code.

So now I've installed VirtualBox, which works beautifully. In many respects it works better than VMWare, and is very inconspicuous. Problem solved and money saved! I can certainly recommend trying it...

 

[JoelBC]

So now I've installed VirtualBox, which works beautifully. In many respects it works better than VMWare, and is very inconspicuous. Problem solved and money saved! I can certainly recommend trying it...

Interesting...can VirtualBox "point towards" a BootCamp installation in the same way that Fusion and Parallels can...although I tried to find this in the 300+ manual I had no luck...

Thanks,


Joel

 

[chrisvee]

Depends on what you're using the VM software for, right? If money is not a concern, go with Parallels as it is supposedly the superior product. If not, VMware Fusion is excellent software as well.

Personally, I prefer VMware. Not only because my university offers it free for us CS students, but it's actually really good. It was really easy for me to setup and use, and also getting my Boot Camp partition to run as a VM was simple as well. I've seen some screenshots of Parallels, and I gotta say, the interface is much prettier than VMware, but oh well. Free > Not free.

In the end, as above said:

Dear Muffin,

There are soooo many comparisons articles (and MacRumors threads) out there that I stopped reading. They both have pros and cons and for me it came down to price: $42 for Fusion vs $80 for Parallels.

They both do the job well and the $42 price tag did it for me.

That seems to be the deal breaker.

 

[tillsbury]

Interesting...can VirtualBox "point towards" a BootCamp installation in the same way that Fusion and Parallels can...although I tried to find this in the 300+ manual I had no luck...

Thanks,


Joel

It appears that it can, although it's not easy to set up. If you search for this (bootcamp and virtualbox) there are a number of pages that allegedly show you how to make it happen. But I'm not brave enough to try them at the moment.

To be honest, I found that after playing with VMWare for a month, it was fun to use bootcamp within OSX, but I wasn't seriously doing anything once Windows was set up. I use XP within a virtual window for work (within Virtualbox itself). I have Windows 7 in Bootcamp, but that's only for running games and some video/photographic work. The only reason I'm running those under Windows instead of OSX is to increase their performance, and so they have to be running under Bootcamp anyway. It's of very little use to me to have those applications running virtually, as the only reason they're there is for them to run quickly. For this reason (and the fact that it only takes 15-20 seconds to reboot into Windows) I don't have much of a need to run Bootcamp virtually. I thought I would, but it turns out otherwise.

 

[brentmore]

Virtualbox has been pretty good for what I needed: Minitab and VCarve. It has great support, is updated often and is free. The only issues I had with it was when I'd try to run some more graphics intensive and data crunching apps like ArcGIS. Then again, I'm still on a C2D MBP.

 

[tillsbury]

As soon as you get into graphics intensive stuff even on VMWare or Fusion on a 2.6MHz Retina, the performance dies a death.