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VMWare Fusion or Parallels for RMBP?

insimbi

insimbi

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 27, 2008
356
37
While waiting on my RMBP to arrive I need to decide which of these to use to run Windows. I already own VMWare Fusion, but I am hearing that it's not supporting the Retina display very well? I will be running Windows quite a bit and need something that will run well under Mac OS X and the new display.

Any recommendations? :confused:
 
insimbi said:
While waiting on my RMBP to arrive I need to decide which of these to use to run Windows. I already own VMWare Fusion, but I am hearing that it's not supporting the Retina display very well? I will be running Windows quite a bit and need something that will run well under Mac OS X and the new display.

Any recommendations? :confused:
Click to expand...



Well, I'm sure VMware Fusion will be updated. I have Parallels on my iMac and it is a very solid program, I just bought my RMBP but I don't have it on here so I can't say if it natively supports RMBP already.
 
stick with fusion. it does things properly.


maybe try virtualbox if you want to give something different a go. parallels seems to try and get things running "fast" with less priority on them being "stable" and "correctly implemented".
 
I used to be only a Fusion user... til VMWare Fusion 4 finally came out.. and ... blah... Parallels 7 is better so I switched. Not having any issues with Parallels 7 on my rMBP.

You can do a free trial of ether or both of them and just don't activate Windows in the trial... play around with them and use what is best for you.
 
I was about to ask the same question so any more insight would be appreciated.

Most reviews that I read online by so called experts say that Parallels is indeed better. I'm wondering what the general user base says about that.

Thanks in advance
 
I used to use fusion but I prefer parallels. It works properly on the mac.
You can use full screen.
 
doh123 said:
I used to be only a Fusion user... til VMWare Fusion 4 finally came out.. and ... blah... Parallels 7 is better so I switched. Not having any issues with Parallels 7 on my rMBP.
Click to expand...

Same here. I used Fusion until v4 then switched to Parallels 7. I've found it faster and, surprisingly, more reliable than Fusion. Works great on my rMBP too.
 
darthmental said:
wow that's a great deal....and that is for the full version of parallels? Seems like a no brainer.

Thanks for the link
Click to expand...

Yep it's the full version.

Bare in mind, Parallels will *probably* release version 8 shortly after Mountain Lion and boast "Optimized for 10.8", but there is an upgrade price option if you do decide to upgrade in the future, and you also don't have to upgrade :)
 
mattonthemoon said:
Yep it's the full version.

Bare in mind, Parallels will *probably* release version 8 shortly after Mountain Lion and boast "Optimized for 10.8", but there is an upgrade price option if you do decide to upgrade in the future, and you also don't have to upgrade :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info....just bought it, since there are several programs I would use for sure from the bundle. If I "have" to update it later, it will still be a decent deal.

Thanks again
 
BTW, in case anyone is wondering, under Parallels my MBPR (2.3) has the following Windows Experience Index scores:

Processor: 7.6
Memory 5.5
Graphics 6.0
Gaming Graphics 6.0
Primary Hard Disk 7.9

This is for Windows 7, 32-bit, with 3 GB of memory allotted.

In practical terms, it will nicely play 1080p MKV files in media player classic located on a networked external drive
 
Installed Para 7 yesterday works great.

----------

Installed Para 7 yesterday works great prefer it over bootcamp.
 
Parallels is great, if you enjoy them releasing a new update every 6 months.

I've used both and while benchmarks may prove Parallels superior during portions of VMware's release cycle, VMware is a more polished product has caused me nearly no headaches while Parallels often does.
 
slightly off topic but I have a question for you guys, Can you play full screen games properly using VMware and parallels just like u can play with windows using botcamp
 
Anyone able to comment on how well the scaled modes (1920x1200 and 1680x1050) look when running Windows 7 in Parallels (or VMWare)?
 
I had VMWare 3 and I wasn't thrilled with it. It seemed to frequently lock up my machine or slow it to a crawl. I realize that v4 is out so that may have improved things, but I switched over to Parallels and haven't looked back. Works perfectly for me, and I got mine for direct cheap using the Mupromo.
 
d00d said:
Parallels is great, if you enjoy them releasing a new update every 6 months.

I've used both and while benchmarks may prove Parallels superior during portions of VMware's release cycle, VMware is a more polished product has caused me nearly no headaches while Parallels often does.
Click to expand...

out of curiosity, d00d, what headaches has parallels 7 caused you? my biggest issues with parallels 7 has been my keyboard/input abilities between osx and windows will stop working on one or the other OS and i'll have to end up suspending/starting parallels again.
 
insimbi said:
While waiting on my RMBP to arrive I need to decide which of these to use to run Windows. I already own VMWare Fusion, but I am hearing that it's not supporting the Retina display very well? I will be running Windows quite a bit and need something that will run well under Mac OS X and the new display.

Any recommendations? :confused:
Click to expand...

I use/own both VMWare and Parallels and I have found Parallels to be exceptional. I'm currently running the beta of the next version of VMWare and the current version of Parallels. I find that Parallels is much faster than VMware on both the current version as well as the beta.

I use VM's for the following:

Windows 2008 R2 Server
MS SQL Server
MySQL
IIS
Windows 7 Pro 64Bit
Windows 8 Preview
Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2012 (whatever the current RC is)

I also tend to use multiple VMs at the same time. If you look at my system specs below, I have had the best performance with Parallels.

People have stated that VMWare is slower but more stable but Parallels has been just as stable as VMWare. I also find that Parallels puts out new versions much faster. They were first to support the MBPr.

While working on an OpenGL application, VMWare just could not display it correctly but Parallels could. The application work great on a 'real' Windows machine, Parallels, but VMWare had trouble. In fairness, this was with VMWare 3.x so I did not try it under 4.x.

YMMV. However, having an SSD and 16 Gb of RAM is a must for high-end VM work in my experience. The SSD really offsets any disk thrashing caused by the VMs under OS X. When I had the stock HD, the system could really bog down during dish thrashing with multiple VMs. Under the SSD, you don't even notice it.

Did you know you can buy Parallels for $29 if you own VMware? They have a kind of hidden page here:

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/vmwareoffer/form/


For real world use, I would own both and that way you are covered no matter what.

Good Luck!
-P
 
I have been using parallels 7 with windows 7 home 64bit. Awesome experience. Also been playing a lot of a old game on it, RTCW. I was devastated when the Mac version was axed, this fills the void perfectly. Amazing resolution and plays w/o a hitch even while playing online.
 
Bought Parallels 7 several months ago for only $29. It works great on my Mac Mini and the new rMBP. I just use it for some Windows only web sites and some light weight apps. With Windows 7 32-bit, Parallels uses very little CPU in idle and reasonable under light load.
 
Interesting to hear this. I am currently test-driving VMWare, which is working perfectly. Mainly because it was $49. It gives me a windows index of 5.9 on a 2.6/16/768 running in a window, when it's given 4 processor cores and 3Gb RAM. It's processor and memory that's the lowest. Everything works under W7 and XP, and I particularly have some weird old XP applications I need to run. I hardly ever use W7. I did try running Steam, but it was just not quick enough to run 3d games properly.

Do you think it'd be worthwhile trying Parallels? Is there an easy way to transfer virtual machines from one to the other, or will I need to reinstall everything? Can I run both simultaneously?

I don't mind buying parallels if it's really significantly quicker -- how did you get the 7+ rating and will it really run 3d games within W7 in OSX properly? Or am I better off running Bootcamp for that? I probably have another three weeks to decide before the vmware trial ends. And, of course, by then we'll probably be running ML and it won't be long before we're running W8 on that...
 
Do a free trial of both and see which one you prefer. Personally I like Fusion more.
 
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