Parallels or VMware for Windows VM in OSX?

milltown

What are people's opinions on these two?
I expect there are more Parallels users and would like to hear what they think but would especially like to hear from anyone who has tried both. I foolishly installed the trial of Parallels just before I went on holidays and the two week trial was up by the time I tried to use it

I have a W7 bootcamp partition on my iMac with Office on it but switching between the two is a pain. Supposedly, holding down the option key lets you choose OS whenever you start up but it seems only to work occasionally. I suspect it may be down to the bluetooth keyboard not pairing quickly enough but I really don't know.

I got a copy of Office 2011 for Mac today but before I open it and use the licence I wonder would I be better off just sticking with my PC Office licence in a VM. Two licences for the same suite of software on one physical machine seems ridiculous, especially for somebody who used to take pride in the fact, years ago, that there wasn't a legit piece of software on my PC!

FWIW, Windows is only really needed for Mrs.Milltown's work, using Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Sharepoint and Citrix.

TIA.

nesf

I've used both, I prefer Parallels.

Diarmuid

Why not VirtualBox? It's open sourced and free

Hobbes

I have only used Parallels. I like the fact you can have it running invisible and all the windows apps launch like as if they are part of the Mac system.

milltown

Diarmuid wrote: »

Why not VirtualBox? It's open sourced and free

How user friendly is that?
I have neither beard nor glasses and find that a lot of open source software "expects" a certain level of sacrifice/expertise.
Years ago I would have whooped at the free bit but nowadays I'm too old and curmudgeonly to put up with command lines and software that doesn't work the way I want it to. Kind of why I switched to Mac this year I suppose.

Freddie59

I've been using Parallels for over a year now. Only issue is that it cannot use the firewire port, so no importing video (therefore no video editing) in Windows. Otherwise it's seamless.

Diarmuid

milltown wrote: »

How user friendly is that?.

Never had any problem getting to grips with it. Why not give it a whirl for 10 minutes?

milltown

I'm actually giving VMware a spin as we speak, and finding it pretty good.
Nesf, what did you find better about Parallels?

nesf

milltown wrote: »

I'm actually giving VMware a spin as we speak, and finding it pretty good.
Nesf, what did you find better about Parallels?

I found it a bit less temperamental and more stable overall. Better thought out and more tuned for a Mac than VMWare's offering. It's a bit faster than VMWare, not that much but it's there. Better 3D performance and video editing ability though not sure why you'd do these in a virtual machine really.

There's not much in it but Parallels at the moment edges it.

Freddie59

Just one other thing - sometimes when toggling between Mac OSx and Windows, the Caps lock key becomes inverted in Windows. Can be a little bit annoying.

nesf

Did a little test there with Ubuntu 11.04. Performance is far better on Parallels versus VirtualBox. It's a lot more straightforward to install with Parallels (only an issue if you're not that technically minded). VirtualBox was usable but there was far too much lag for my liking.

Well naturally performance will be better with a paid product like vmWare (they are market leaders)

I have had not problems with lag on VB with 2 windows open and ubuntu open and toggling between them on spaces. Only lag was with ubuntu flash playing as I didnt tweak it for days.

Talisman

Parallels Desktop has been a far better supported product than VMware Fusion in recent years.

Fusion gets a minor update about once every six months, v3.13 was released in May and is not fully Lion compatible - there have been problems with USB devices. There has been talk of a VMware Fusion 4 since late last year but the product is still an internal Beta.

Freddie59

Just one other thing. Was thinking of upgrading to Lion, and got a pop-up from Parallels today telling me to buy v6 - it's the only one which will work with Lion. Grrrrrr!

Creamy Goodness

has virtualbox been upgraded yet to use bootcamp partitions? don't really want to have to have two copies of xp installed.

nesf

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

has virtualbox been upgraded yet to use bootcamp partitions? don't really want to have to have two copies of xp installed.

Nope.