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VMware vs. Parallas

Which product to choose?

  • VMware

    Votes: 24 39.3%

  • Parallels

    Votes: 37 60.7%
  • Total voters
    61
  • Poll closed .
S

Scuba629

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 14, 2010
249
5
Ive done a lot of reading on the two and they both seem similar. In the end it seems they go back and forth being whos the best at anything but I guess to expand on that.. Which is better on Lion? Anyone have both to give a good comparison?

Also who updates their package more?
 
ZBoater said:
I haven't run VMware, but I run Parallels and think it is amazing. I got it off Amazon for $60.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think they both have an Education discount so that will help. :) Did Amazon ship it to you? Or was it some kinda digital download?
 
Scuba629 said:
Yeah I think they both have an Education discount so that will help. :) Did Amazon ship it to you? Or was it some kinda digital download?
Click to expand...

I'm an Amazon Prime member, so free 2-day shipping of a box. Hopefully all I need is the key, as I am running the trial version now.
 
I've used both, long time VMware user, and only purchased Parallels because VMware ran Windows 7 like a dog on my 2009 Macbook Pro 13".

I've since got a new 2011 Macbook Air 13" i5 and VMware is flying! (Not tried Parallels on the Air yet though).

I have a personal preference for VMWare since I just think it feels more solid and stable. Parallels is faster though, and better if you want to do gaming etc.

Paul
 
Parallas is sure better because it's made by the spaniard. lol jk

i prefer vmware because im already used to it, the settings and everything, and it's fast too.

i havent tried parallels since i bought it years ago.
 
I have used all 3, and in my experience Parallels is the fastest and best performing by far. VMWare was very doggy and made the Windows VM noticeably laggy and slow. VirtualBox has been OK but unless they've made an up date in the past month or two there was a bug with Sandy Bridge chipsets which made the guest OSes run very, VERY slow, so I am back to Parallels. I have a 2011 13" MBP with an Intel SSD and 8GB of RAM...my Windows 7 VM will go from off to login screen in ~7 seconds.
 
Very interested in this.

I've always liked VMWare myself - maybe its because I have familiar with it and its proven technology they are using from reliable enterprise class stuff.
 
Scuba629 said:
Ive done a lot of reading on the two and they both seem similar. In the end it seems they go back and forth being whos the best at anything but I guess to expand on that.. Which is better on Lion? Anyone have both to give a good comparison?

Also who updates their package more?
Click to expand...
I opted for for vmware because parallels while faster in performance for games is a bit more unstable and support is lacking. I've never been disappointed with vmware's support system. Fusion is rock solid and I have no BSODs. Heck with parallels I got kernel panics.


KnightWRX said:
VirtualBox. Works as great as the others, has the same feature set, and the best price : 0$.
Click to expand...
Yes its free and the truism "you get what you pay for" fits as well.
I've used VB and its performance, and it does not have the same features as parallels/vmware. Then there's Oracle's track record with open source, just take a look at open office as an example.

Saving 50 bucks now may end up costing you more in the future with frustration, extra work and less features.
 
Last edited:
I have used both Fusion and Parallels Desktop, and have settled on Parallels Desktop, mostly because of the performance. Parallels 6 is pretty stable now with the most recent build.
 
Hmm seems mixed between Parallels and VMware! Not sure which to get...

Although to those pondering Parallels, Macsuperbundle (http://macsuperbundle.com) has it and other software for $49.

What's the minimum recommended RAM that you guys recommend for running Lion + Parallels/VMware? 4Gb enough or would you recommend 8?

Thanks.

Edit: As far as I can see, my late 2008 MBP (2.53GHz, 4Gb) supports up to 6Gb of DDR3-1066 RAM (http://guides.macrumors.com/Understanding_Intel_Mac_RAM). So would it be best just to get a single 4Gb module and use it with an existing 2Gb module?
 
Last edited:
Virtula Box, VMWare

KnightWRX said:
VirtualBox. Works as great as the others, has the same feature set, and the best price : 0$.
Click to expand...

I disagree with this statement. VirtualBox is free and an excellent product, but it is limited with regard to graphics in a major way. Plus, it does not have as many operating modes (modality, coherence, etc) that you have in Parallels.

For work, I run Windows XP in VirtualBox. It truly is an excellent product, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't need gaming performance. It boots relatively quickly, and has a great "snapshot" feature that allows you to boot into a clean system every time. It seems to run more smoothly than Parallels, with almost none of the slow-downs, pauses, and hangs that Parallels has on occasion.

At home, I run Windows 7 in Parallels 6. This is 100% only because of games. In my experience, Parallels takes more time to configure than VirtualBox, but is is more flexible and can even boot into an existing Boot Camp partition. in addition, maybe once every 20 hours or so (of inconsistent use), Parallels will unexpectedly quit or freeze completely. I don't game all that much, so it doesn't bother me, but it is something to keep in mind.

I have not tried VMWare because it seems to consistently rate lower than Parallels for graphics performance.
 
solowmodel said:
Hmm seems mixed between Parallels and VMware! Not sure which to get...

Although to those pondering Parallels, Macsuperbundle (http://macsuperbundle.com) has it and other software for $49.

What's the minimum recommended RAM that you guys recommend for running Lion + Parallels/VMware? 4Gb enough or would you recommend 8?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Since this is a MacBook Air forum, 4GB is the maximum you can get. It works quite adequately on my 4GB Core i7 model. I give Windows 7 1.75GB of RAM and 2 virtual cores.
 
KPOM said:
Since this is a MacBook Air forum, 4GB is the maximum you can get. It works quite adequately on my 4GB Core i7 model. I give Windows 7 1.75GB of RAM and 2 virtual cores.
Click to expand...

This was going to be my plan but isn't 2 cores all the CPU it has? or does it have 4 cores with hyper threading.

Seems most like Parallels better here. Wonder if either is going to come out with a major release soon making what I buy now out of date.
 
maflynn said:
Yes its free and the truism "you get what you pay for" fits as well.
I've used VB and its performance, and it does not have the same features as parallels/vmware. Then there's Oracle's track record with open source, just take a look at open office as an example.
Click to expand...

VB supports seamless mode, 3D/2D acceleration, windowed guests/full screen guests, has VRDP for headless mode.

About the only thing lacking is hot-plug for SCSI hard drives, which while it is supported in ESXi, I doubt it is in the workstation product, same for parallels, and is quite moot for consumers.

Oracle's track record on Open source means nothing. They have already burned the bridges they had to burn in the few weeks following the Sun acquisition. And like OpenOffice and MySQL, if Oracle decides to do a dumb move with VirtualBox, it will get forked and that's going to be the end of that.

maflynn said:
Saving 50 bucks now may end up costing you more in the future with frustration, extra work and less features.
Click to expand...

Or just save 50$ now and spend it in the future, when 50$ is worthless than it is worth now if you do have a need. VirtualBox has served me well for quite a few years now.


Scuba629 said:
This was going to be my plan but isn't 2 cores all the CPU it has? or does it have 4 cores with hyper threading.
Click to expand...

Your CPU is sitting idle most of the time. We use to run these virtualization packages on single core, single thread processors and it worked just fine. Don't worry too much about it.


strwrsfrk said:
I disagree with this statement. VirtualBox is free and an excellent product, but it is limited with regard to graphics in a major way. Plus, it does not have as many operating modes (modality, coherence, etc) that you have in Parallels.
Click to expand...

Disagree all you want, you obviously have not used VirtualBox in quite a while. Limited with regards to graphics what ?
 
Scuba629 said:
This was going to be my plan but isn't 2 cores all the CPU it has? or does it have 4 cores with hyper threading.

Seems most like Parallels better here. Wonder if either is going to come out with a major release soon making what I buy now out of date.
Click to expand...

It has 4 virtual cores with hyperthreading.
 
I have VMWare Fusion and it's not bad, but I would probably choose Parallels over VMWare. VMWare seem to have forgotten about their Mac products - there seems to be more active development going on in Parallels.
 
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