VMWare vs. Parallels (on Macs)

Brad R Friday 12 February 2010 - 10:27:04  

Thanks to Manny K. for sending this along: a review in the Wall Street Journal of the new versions of Parallels and VMWare Fusion for Mac users. Walt Mossberg writes:

I've been comparing these latest versions, called Parallels Desktop 5 and VMWare Fusion 3, using each to run Windows 7 on the same Mac laptop powered by Snow Leopard. My verdict is that, after falling behind Fusion for awhile, Parallels is now the best choice again. In my tests, it proved to be both faster, and more capable of handling the heavy-duty visual effects in Windows 7.

I've mentioned Parallels before, most recently when I was evaluating products to let me run Windows applications on my Linux box. The only reason I didn't try an evaluation copy of Parallels then was because I already had VMWare and VirtualBox, and those turned out to be sufficient for my needs.

It's an impressive achievement that both Parallels Desktop 5 and VMWare Fusion 3 can both run Windows 7 with satisfactory results. This speaks to the continuing development of both products. Both Parallels and VMWare also provide products for Linux, though I see that Parallels Desktop for Linux is still at version 4, and Fusion is strictly a Mac product (Linux users need VMWare Workstation, currently at version 7).
printer friendly