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Parallels or Fusion?

SnowLeopard2008

SnowLeopard2008

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 4, 2008
6,772
19
Silicon Valley
I'm kinda sick of rebooting, since I usually put my computer to sleep when I'm not using it. Boot Camp is great software, but I really want either Parallels or Fusion. Which one has a better interface, support, cpu usage, etc. Please convince me using facts and not just opinions, although they are welcome. Which one works better?

Also, I have a bootcamp partition, I've heard ppl say that one virtualization program or maybe both will accept that drive. that saves me alot of backup work and time. Which one will use an existing bootcamp partition? or both?

thanks so much!
 
Both have their fans and both do the job well
It is really a matter of personal preference
You can't be convinced of one being better than the other... they aren't

The majority around here use Fusion, but Parallels has its fans too

There are a number of threads already discussing the pros and cons of both
You might try MRoogle to find them

Or you can check the guides in the top right corner of this page
They have a lot of info on both

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
I have both products and they both work quite well. Personally, I prefer Parallels as I find it faster and has more features that you may or may not care about.

Try them both as they both come in demo versions.

They both support bootcamp partitions, but I no longer use Parallels that was. I have deleted bootcamp.
 
I also have purchased both Fusion and Parallels. They each seem to leapfrog each other as new releases come out. I currently am favoring Parallels 3.0 over Fusion 1.1 and 2.0 beta. They will both use your BootCamp partition with no problem. If you are not looking to do anything very graphics oriented, each does an excellent job.

My biggest pet peeve with Fusion ... I prefer to run in windowed mode and jump back and forth between an OS X program and Win XP with the CMD-TAB shortcut. When doing this with Fusion, the Windows Start Menu is constantly popping up inadvertently causing my active program in Windows to lose the focus. Quite annoying. Also I am running a Cisco VPN client in Windows to access my workplace's intranet. It seems that Fusion will frequently have my connection dropped forcing me to reconnect. Parallels keeps it open indefinitely I have found.

My biggest peeve with Parallels ... After putting my MacBook Pro to sleep, the video will frequently get corrupted in the Win XP VM. There will be splitting and corruption of the screen. This is cured only by shutting down Parallels and restarting. Simply rebooting the virtual machine doesn't fix the problem. Some screen shots showing examples are shown at ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21660729@N04/2714179430/
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/21660729@N04/2714179350/in/photostream/

I happen to like Parallels interface better, but again it is a matter of choice. I also prefer Parallels ability to have multiple snapshots of the VM to revert to.
 
Fusion doesn't give me any display issues on either my iMac or my MacBook Pro. Parallels doesn't do this on my iMac either. Only problem is with Parallels on the MBP.

Mark
 
one last question, does both software use dual cores? and the advantages and disadvantages of using or not using dual cores? since I have two cores, I want the best bang for the buck.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
one last question, does both software use dual cores? and the advantages and disadvantages of using or not using dual cores? since I have two cores, I want the best bang for the buck.
Click to expand...

Fusion allows the use of both cores but I'm not sure about parallel's as i haven't used it for about a year, their was a thread in the windows on Mac sub forum about the advantages and disadvantages of dedicating two cores to the VM but i cant for the life of me remember the title, anyway's if my memory serves me correctly the outcome was it depends on what you want to do and for best results using only one came out tops
 
ok thanks, i might go parallels since it is a later version, and that usually means they learn from the previous releases and fix the bugs from them. fusion is still relatively new... around 1.x.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
ok thanks, i might go parallels since it is a later version, and that usually means they learn from the previous releases and fix the bugs from them. fusion is still relatively new... around 1.x.
Click to expand...

Fusion isn't relatively new it's been out ages, it's only beta 2 that's new and that hasn't been released, i'd try both if i was you fusion normally comes out tops
 
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