Vm Fusion vs Parallels vs Bootcamp

There is a freebie alternative - VirtualBox. I run Fusion and am a satisfied customer.

 

I recently dropped Parallels due to their upgrade pricing. I've been a customer since 2.0 and got tired of paying (quite a bit) to upgrade every year.

Virtual Box has worked great for me in the Windows world (work stuff), haven't tried it on my Mac (yet).

Fusion will be the next virtualization environment that I try. I have an ESX server and figure that seamless VM compatibility will be nice.

 

Me too. The upgrade after Lion was the last straw for me. Naturally, the old version was incompatible with the new OS, and once I paid Parallels their ransom, I found the new version very buggy. Bootcamp works fine for me, as little as I go into Windows.

 

I have the same MBA and use VMWare for work. I have never had an issue with it yet - runs flawlessly. However, if you don't have the opportunity to get it expensed like I did (which I doubt since you're in an academic environment) give VirtualBox a go. I've heard it's a great alternative. It's like the LibreOffice of Virtual Machines.

 

+1 for VirtualBox

 

I run a parallels (newest version) and there is no reason to boot into bootcamp anymore.

 

+1 for VirtualBox, running both WinXP and latest version of Ubuntu VM's, works great on my MBA.

Brian

 

Exactly. I purchased the full version for 2.0, then 3.0 a few months later, repeat until 6.0. When the 7.0 upgrade came, at another $50, I just couldn't do it. Especially since Fusion is $50 for the full version (or at least was at the time). I contacted Parallels and explained my situation and they told me to pound sand. The upgrade price was fixed and would never be dropped lower. The next day a coworker got an email offering a Parallels 7.0 upgrade at $25. Sigh... Forget it, I've had enough w/the "Parallels ransom" (that's good, I like that).

 

I have Fusion 4.0 and have been very happy with it. The full-screen features of Fusion work great and are better than Parallels Desktop IMO.

 

As many of the other posters suggested, I would go with VirtualBox. I use it quite a bit for both Linux and Windows. I haven't had any problems and the price is right (Free). Bootcamp is a much bigger commitment, since you have to repartition your disk. It is also major pain having to reboot to use Linux. I'm not even sure that Parallels or Fusion really add much for Linux, for Windows yes, Linux, I don't think so.

VirtualBox is the easy, safe solution it seems to me. And when you are done, you can simply delete the virtual drive to reclaim space.

 

+1 for Virtual Box! I like free.

 

I upgraded to the latest VMware & Parallels. After two weeks I ended up returning to Virtual Box. Not because it was free, but after careful analysis it's 15% to 22% faster than the other two. May not sound like much to some, but I'm addicted to speed, stability and reliability. It saves me quite a bit of time at work. A reward that's truly worth it.

 

I hated virtual box. Its a developers type of application and I did not have the desire to figure it out.

Get Parallels 7. Works Great out of the box.

 

You do have a point. For the novice it's a bit more difficult than Parallels which is designed for beginners. It's all in how much patience & experience with computers you have. All three do the same thing they simply have their differences.

 

Only Fusion for me. I had bought both at one point but stopped upgrading Parallels. Not just because of the frequent paid upgrades, but also because I can share VMs with other systems. VMWare is just the industry standard.

When I had both, Parallels was a bit faster and had more features than VMWare in terms of 3D graphics card emulation, but VMWare may have caught up. Anyway I use boot camp for that anyway, it's the best if you need speed or graphics.

 

Fusion user here with no complaints whatsoever

However, that said, with VirtualBox being free, and both Fusion and Parallels having free trials, I would suggest trying them out yourself
Since they all do 'virtually' the same thing, it is all about personal preference, and nobody can determine that but you

I gave up BootCamp long ago and find no need for it at all

 

I used virtualbox for awhile. I thought it felt slow and the options weren't readily available as I felt Parallels or Fusion were. It's been awhile since I ran Virtual Box so this was my experience a couple of years ago. I run VMware Fusion myself. Parallels felt faster but seemed to crash more often and I would rather give up a little speed and not experience a crash. Again this was a couple of years ago. After I went VMware, I just haven't gone back. I can buy full versions for $40 at Amazon so it just didn't seem worth switching at that price.

 

Tried parallells, but had some odd issues with it, and the support was non-existant. Crashed a few times, menus was harder to navigate and so on. This might have changes now though, it was a while ago.

Anyway, I tried Fusion, and I love it. Never had a single issue with it, easy to find all the settings, and performance is more than acceptable for what I use it for. I also like that VMWare is widely used, so I won't have any troubles moving my VM's to other platforms if I should want to. +1 for VMWare.

I tried VirtualBox, and it was quite nice tbh. The only thing I failed to do was to set up my code editor to trigger the compiler under OS X when I pressed the compile button. Not a major thing for most people, but since I needed VMWare for a developer environment, it was a big issue for me. It worked great in VMWare though, overall it seems to have the best OS X integration.

 

I have parallels and its great if you just need windows functionality in mac, but if you actually need the power of the system you have to use bootcamp.

I have my flash partitioned half mac half windows and it runs great. I use Parallels to log into my bootcamp from inside mac so I don't have to reboot to make minor changes in the OS or access things I need in there. But if I want to play a game or do anything that needs actual power I log into bootcamp.

 

Vbox for me too and it can use VMware's VMDK for portability.