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So is Parallels the clear winner over VMWare fusion these days?

spaceballl

spaceballl

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 2, 2003
2,940
365
San Francisco, CA
I used to have Parallels, back when it was the first virtualization game in town.

Then VMWare Fusion came along, and it was much better.

Then they seem to have flip flopped a few times.

Now it seems like Parallels supports retina displays and is more used. I have a rMBP.

Can someone set me straight?

Thanks!
 
No, Fusion wins outright if you are looking for long term stability and ground up support with the OS. 3D support and faster GPU processing, go with Parallels.

There is currently a discussion about this (and boot camp as well) here: Click Me
 
Yah thanks for that link - reading it now. Looks like a lot of the discussion is about virtualization v. metal.

VMWare doesn't yet support retina displays, right?
 
The Mercurian said:
End of discussion surely ?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you're doing. I don't use it for games at all, I have tons of work things that I need to make sure run stable and reliably. Thus I use Fusion. Cross platform is also a huge boon for me since I often trade development environments with co-workers.
 
I use Fusion, it tends to me more stable then Parallels, has all the features I want and the support is superior to parallels. From what I saw in a prior thread, evidently parallels pushes ads on you when you start the app up (or when you start a vm up). Given its a commercial app, I don't think I want see ads - but that's just me.
 
I used Parallels back in 2007/8, and it had an annoying bug where the viewer window would crash, but the OS would continue to run in the background. If you re-launched Parallels, it would run the guest OS a 2nd time, and you'd be running the same install of Windows twice.

I switched to VMWare, and haven't had a single issue since.
 
Used to use Parallels when it was the only game in town, but switched to Fusion when that overtook parallels in the speed department and haven't looked back.

Also, I seemed to remember Parallels spread its tentacles out throughout the system installing helper apps and putting files and directories everywhere, whereas fusion is just one contained app + pref files. I am talking a couple of years back now though, so they may have cleaned up their "sprawling-ness" (i love making up words...)
 
I took Parallels, because its in the iStach Bundle right now.

https://stacksocial.com/sales/the-istack-mac-bundle?rid=88691

And i'm very happy with it. Using it for a program that only exists for Windows and i need it when i'm on callservice.

I got the link to the programm in my Dock and when i click it, it starts the XP VM in the background (i never see it) and after a few seconds (since the VM was just sleeping and not shutdown completly) opens the programm and it looks like any other Program in OSX. Never get to see Windows Desktop or anything. Works perfectly.

But i'm sure Fusion can do that too.
 
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