Virtual Machines - Best Host Software

VirtualBox is free, but Parallels and Fusion are more intuitive for beginners and have more features. Parallels and Fusion both have trial versions; download all three and see which you like best.

 

I use VMWare Workstation on Windows and VirtualBox on Mac.

VMWare has some really good features but never tried it on the Mac (does it exist?).

 

Fusion = VMWare Fusion

 

Ah! Same drag and drop functionality? TBH, anything but Hyper-V...

 

Yep! Parallels also has drag/drop functionality, but I use and prefer VMWare Fusion over it.

 

Parallels lost me as a customer last year when they were charging full price to existing customers to upgrade to the latest version (I don't mind paying for the latest and greatest, but I feel they should have given a discount to those already using their product). This wouldn't have been such a big deal, but version 7 was buggy in Mountain Lion - so you were pretty much forced to upgrade Parallels, or downgrade OS X. Anyway, VMWare was offering a discount on their software to existing Parallels customers, and it was cheaper than what I would have paid to upgrade Parallels, so I made the switch.

TL;DR: mostly a grudge I have with Parallels.

They're essentially the same and have most of the same features - both great software. That's why I suggested to download the trial versions and play around to see which you like more.

 

What's so bad about virtualbox? It's free & cross platform

 

I didn't notice any difference in speed/performance between Parallels and VMWare. And as far as I'm aware, they have the same major features:
- Boot Camp virtualization
- drag & drop files across host/VM and vice versa
- "coherence" mode (Parallels) vs "unity" mode (VMWare)


Sorry that doesn't help narrow anything down, but I don't think you'd regret buying either as you wouldn't really be missing out on anything.

 

Have always been a VMware Fusion user and very happy. Run it on all OS X machines and is very stable. Virtualize Windows 7 Enterprise in Boot Camp partition for production use on a Mac Pro 12-core.

They have two versions- if you need more advanced networking features, they have that available.

 

Glad you're enjoying it. It's amazing how far virtualization software has come in the last few years.