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VirtualBox beats Parallels and VMWare

roadbloc

roadbloc

macrumors G3
Original poster
Aug 24, 2009
8,784
215
UK
I had Parallels 5, to run the odd extra OS for giggles and sometimes practical reasons. At work they have VMWare for the odd XP program. Eventually, they both annoyed me with their bloated nature.

I dunno about you guys but I downloaded VirtualBox, and I am very impressed with it to say it's free. With Parallels, running Windows XP with 1GB of ram, my fans would blow franticly. The same on VirtualBox, and everything is smooth, it is so lightweight, has all the features and supports OS's a lot more than Parallels and VMWare.

What do you think? Was it a mistake me buying Parallels 5?
 
roadbloc said:
I had Parallels 5, to run the odd extra OS for giggles and sometimes practical reasons. At work they have VMWare for the odd XP program. Eventually, they both annoyed me with their bloated nature.

I dunno about you guys but I downloaded VirtualBox, and I am very impressed with it to say it's free. With Parallels, running Windows XP with 1GB of ram, my fans would blow franticly. The same on VirtualBox, and everything is smooth, it is so lightweight, has all the features and supports OS's a lot more than Parallels and VMWare.

What do you think? Was it a mistake me buying Parallels 5?
Click to expand...

I'd like to hear about this. I haven't had a chance to load Windows OS on either bootcamp or any of the virtual applications (VMWare/Parallels/etc.). It's not like I really had the need to although I'm still porting Windows applications over to MAC.
 
VirtualBox doesn't support Aero if you ever install Windows 7. I use VMWare Fusion on my Mac and VirtualBox on my work PC. VMWare doesn't cause my fans to go crazy unless I'm actually doing something cpu intensive in the VM.
 
The only problem that I have with Virtual Box is that you can't use the partition that you have Windows on as the virtual machine. It has to create a virtual drive to install the OS on. If you're like me, and have a Bootcamp partition for gaming and a few business apps; you can't use that for both with Virtual Box. With Virtual Box you'd have to have two different installs, one for the OS with the business apps (running on a virtual partition) and then a Bootcamp partition. This means you're using up twice the amount of space for the OS, and on a laptop, that could be a lot of space. Also licensing of Windows can be an issue because you're not actually running the same partition, now you are running two separate copies.
 
CylonGlitch said:
The only problem that I have with Virtual Box is that you can't use the partition that you have Windows on as the virtual machine. It has to create a virtual drive to install the OS on.
Click to expand...

Yes it can. Read the advanced section of the manual. There are vboxmanage commands to import your bootcamp partition.
 
I have had no issues with so-called "bloat" with VMware Fusion. Fusion 3.0.0 was not as fast as previous versions, but came darn close when OS X 10.6.2 was released. Fusion 3.0.1 has been a game-changer for me. It resumes FAST and Aero performance under Windows 7 is superb. All the big modern OS's are supported under Fusion so I don't know what you found that was better supported under VirtualBox. Linux, BSD, OS X server, and most versions of Windows are all fully supported under Fusion 3, and 2 for that matter.
 
I find the seamless integration that vmware offers is superior to virtualbox (no need to hit a key-combo to give the host OS keyboard/mouse focus, plus its performance is better then VB and the support is better.
 
mongrol said:
Yes it can. Read the advanced section of the manual. There are vboxmanage commands to import your bootcamp partition.
Click to expand...

Can you explain or point me to the instructions. I have seen multiple people claim this can be done, and they say see the advanced section...but I do not see where it says this can be done either.

A step by step write up would be nice. Or at least a section number of the manual that will direct me.

Thanks
 
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