Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Which to get: VMware or Parallels

N

nisca11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 28, 2007
6
0
Behind you...Boo!
Hello
I will be buying from MacMall today and was going to get the free option of either parallels or VMWare. I wanted to know what you guys thought was the best version to run windows.
Right now I am on a Powerbook G4 so I have only run the silly MS program for Virtual Machines. So any one of the two I am sure will be a 100% improvement. But I have no experience with either. So please help me choose.

Thanks alot for your help. I appreciate the community.
 
those programs only work if you have an intel mac.

since you have a powerbook, you are stuck with virtual pc..which sucks i know

now if you did have an intel mac, i would reccomend vmware, but both are good
 
I've used both and VMWare seems to be more stable. I actually switched to VMWare because I was having problems using Parallels. It kept freezing up and was driving my research assistant crazy.

Cheers.

P.S. What computer are you buying?
 
dukebound85 said:
those programs only work if you have an intel mac.

since you have a powerbook, you are stuck with virtual pc..which sucks i know

now if you did have an intel mac, i would reccomend vmware, but both are good
Click to expand...

Might want to try reading that post again.

I'd go with Fusion.
 
+1 for Fusion. Haven't had any problems, and if you wait a bit.... you could get v2.0 (I'm not sure if it's a free upgrade for people who buy v1.1 now, but it's free for the early-adopters)
 
Just to clarify, I currently have a PB G4

I am looking to buy the
MacBook Pro
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB/200GB/8600MGT/SD
at Macmall, I was going to buy anyway but today noticed they dropped the price almost 50 dollars so I will probably get it.

They say I can get Parallels for free or VMware for 20 dollars now that I look at it.
Based on the posts so far it seems Vmware is better, but is the VMware software worth the extra $20. I didn't notice earlier that it was 20 bucks after rebate. I thought it was free as well after rebate.
 
I'd have to say go with Fusion. Parallels gave me too many problems. It would kernel panic my MacBook and it completely borked my bootcamp partition.
 
Fusion. Parallels makes you pay for major updates even when the software didn't work. I never paid for the ugprade to 3.0, and 2.x along with 1.x is crap. They're coming out with 4.0 soon which will be another paid upgrade. Meanwhile VMware is beta testing 2.0 which will be a free upgrade for 1.0 owners. VMware 1.0 has never crashed my machine, where Parallels 2.0 did. USB devices in Parallels 2.0 would bluescreen the VM. I've never had a VM Bluescreen (XP) in Fusion. Parallels feels faster yes, but if faster means I'm rebooting the VM more often because it bluescreens, parallels can keep their fast.. and their bluescreens.

+1 VMware Fusion.
 
nisca11 said:
They say I can get Parallels for free or VMware for 20 dollars now that I look at it.
Based on the posts so far it seems Vmware is better, but is the VMware software worth the extra $20. I didn't notice earlier that it was 20 bucks after rebate. I thought it was free as well after rebate.
Click to expand...

Personally I'd still go Fusion for $20, its $79.99 usually, so still a massive saving. Version 2 is coming soon and its a free upgrade. I have both, they both have features the other doesn't but I've felt Fusion is more stable.
 
Fusion is faster, and has the added bonus of looking less like it was designed to look at home in a kindergarten.

Even with a $100 price difference, I'd choose VMWare.
 
Thanks alot guys, this helped a lot

I just wanted to update you and say that I just finished clicking order now for the MacBook Pro with the VMWare.

Thank you very much for your help!


Now all I have to do is complete my order for a Ram upgrade and I'll be set.
 
Just want to point out that Fusion is far from perfect, itself.

Fusion has some serious specific problems in regard to its "shared folders." I like to keep my data files on the mac partition and access them from the VM through a shared folder. Several programs, though, have problems accessing files from Fusion shared folders...

It's also got problems with keyboard drivers. I've got a custom keyboard driver for running Windows under Bootcamp. But when I run my bootcamp partition under Fusion, it chokes on the driver... It's annoying because I have to disable it each time I use it. I had similar issues with a mouse, though I don't use that mouse anymore.

There are also several annoying aspects of "coherence" or whatever they call it.

So, I use Parallels.

Hopefully Fusion 2.0 will be fixing most of this, though.
 
Hawkeye411 said:
I've used both and VMWare seems to be more stable. I actually switched to VMWare because I was having problems using Parallels. It kept freezing up and was driving my research assistant crazy.

Cheers.

P.S. What computer are you buying?
Click to expand...

He's not. He has a G4 and is stuck with MS VirtualPC
 
Trip.Tucker said:
He's not. He has a G4 and is stuck with MS VirtualPC
Click to expand...

he is buying a new comp

nisca11 said:
Just to clarify, I currently have a PB G4

I am looking to buy the
MacBook Pro
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB/200GB/8600MGT/SD
at Macmall, I was going to buy anyway but today noticed they dropped the price almost 50 dollars so I will probably get it.

They say I can get Parallels for free or VMware for 20 dollars now that I look at it.
Based on the posts so far it seems Vmware is better, but is the VMware software worth the extra $20. I didn't notice earlier that it was 20 bucks after rebate. I thought it was free as well after rebate.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back