SubscribeParallels Desktop 5 vs. VMware Fusion 3
In the last couple weeks, we have seen Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Windows 7 launch. With major OS updates, comes updates to virtualization software. Both, Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion have been updated with Snow Leopard support and Windows 7 integration. For the past year, I have been a VMware Fusion 2 user and have been very happy. Instead of just paying the upgrade fee and moving up the the newest version, I decided to download the free fully functional trials of both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion to compare them. The results were pretty surprising.
I ran my test with Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion on my Macbook Pro 15″ with Windows 7 Ultimate as the OS of choice inside both virtual machines. All Windows 7 settings were the same for both test. I used 2GB of RAM and 1 core of a dual core Intel processor.
Windows 7 Integration
Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion claim to have full Windows 7 support. Both claim to support Windows 7′s advanced visual features known as “Aero”. I can confirm that both systems support them, but I have found that enabling Aero in Windows 7 signifficantly hurts the performance of both Parallels and VMware. In VMware, I had to disable it because I couldn’t do anything with Aero enabled, it was just very laggy and slow. Parallels was a little bit better, but performance was still effected heavily when Aero was enabled. I found it was best to just disable these advanced visual features on both Parallels and VMware. Other than that, Windows 7 support seems to be great, I have not discovered any other bugs or concerns in regards to Windows 7.
Speed and Performance
While both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion have improved upon performance and speed from previous versions, I find Parallels to be significantly faster than VMware. One of the best new features on Windows 7 is the short start up and shut down times, which I can confirm first hand are much faster than any other version of Windows. I ran 5 different start up and shut down test on both Parallels and VMware, and the results were surprisingly different. VMware Fusion 3.0 had an average start up time of 1 minute and 27 seconds and an average shut down time of 27 seconds. Parallels Desktop had an average start up time of 1 minute and 4 seconds and a average shut down time of 17 seconds. I was very surprised to find that Parallels won both test (20+ seconds on start up and 10 seconds on shut down.) While a few seconds to some might not seems like much, I found the additional time with VMware to be noticeable.
Views
Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion offer a wide range of views which allow you to view Windows 7 as a whole in full screen mode or integrate it heavily with Snow Leopard and the dock. I personally prefer to run Windows 7 full screen in my #2 space on my 4 space setup, but I did explore all the different views for the purpose of this write up. VMware offers a windowed, unity, and full screen view. All of which work well. Parallels offers quite a few more options. Parallels full screen and windowed views are the same as VMware Fusion, but they offer a couple of other options allowing you to choose how much of the windows experience you wish to have. The new Crystal mode allows you to work in Windows, but have the look and feel of a Mac. Coherence view allows you to run Windows and Mac applications side by side as if both OS’ are one. Modality takes all your Windows 7 windows and runs them as transparent windows in Mac OS X.
The pictures below are all of Parallels new Crystal View. The last one has an added option to make the windows look like mac windows. This option if known as “Mac Look” in the config panel.
Configuration Options
For me, the configuration options are were Parallels Desktop puts the final nail in the coffin for VMware Fusion. Parallels offers a ton of options and configurations that are not found in VMware. I found that simple tasks like setting up a printer or network are much easier to do with the Parallels config panel. After being with the VMware Fusion option panel for a year, I found the parallels options panel to be a change for the better. Parallels allows you to customize views and integration settings in ways VMware doesn’t even come close to. One other thing I very much liked was how Parallels offers recommended settings based on which OS you have running inside the virtual machine. One option I liked in particular, is the expandable drive offered by Parallels. With VMware, you choose the size of your drive, say 40 gigs, and that is it, you have 40 gigs taken up for your virtual machine regardless of if you are using it in the virtual machine. Parallels on the other hand allows you to set the virtual machine drive size, but it doesn’t automatically occupy the full 40 gigs, it only fills what it uses and will expand as you go up to 40 gigs if it needs to. ( I was mistaken, both VMware and Parallels do this, VMware just hides it a bit.)
Final Thought
Parallels Desktop for Mac is defiantly the winner over VMware Fusion. For me, it is 2 major things that made me switch from VMware Fusion to Parallels Desktop. First, is overall performance and speed, increases. As discussed earlier, I found Parallels to be much quicker with starting up and shutting down. I also noticed better performance on the Mac side with Parallels. VMware for me just seemed to cause applications for freeze up on the Mac side. The second thing, is the options menu as I discussed earlier. The more advanced settings and options that Parallels Desktop offers really allows me to get my Virtual PC setup so both my OS X and Windows 7 applications run smoothly and perform as they should. More control with an application is always a big plus in my eyes.
Parallels Desktop for Mac is available in many brick and mortar and online retailers. You can purchase it online from Parallels.com for $79.99. If you are a pervious Parallels or VMware Fusion owner, you can upgrade to Parallels Desktop 5 for $49.99. Yes, you heard it right, even VMware Fusion people can receive upgrade pricing from Parallels.com. The details on the offer can be found here at the bottom right side of the page.
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Do you know if the new Parallels has Firewire compatibility?
I can't confirm this as I do not use Firewire, but I would be very surprised if they didn't. Try the free trial, it is fully functional.
it has not ever been an option in the past, and VMWare 3 doesn't support it. I'll give it a try tonight.
Oh, that surprises me. Strange! Well it might not be supported, try it and let me know.
Very useful review. My own experience with Parallels 5.0 and Fusion 3.0 completely matches yours, even though I have experienced a noticeable slowdown on the Mac side — a development I am not thrilled about.
I found that if I lowered my RAM to 1.5GB instead of 2, I got better performance on both the Mac and Windows side. You should try that.
Parallels 5 is not currently compatible with Firewire yet, but they are working on it.
They have been working on it for years now. Seriously, everything I have ever read about it since version 3 has said the same thing. Hopefully they figure it out soon!
Thanks for this great post. Since I started using my second Apple note book (the new MacBook Pro 13), I've not used either VMware or Parallels but I've tried both the VMware 2 and Parallels 4 on my earlier MacBook. When I heard about the launch of new VMware fusion and knowing it's cool new features I just couldn't wait for. The day it launched I got a free trial and installed it with high expectations. I installed both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 but I've had problems with both in terms of 3G and visual performance. So when the new parallels 5 was out i downloaded it and start using. I transferred my VMware Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 on to parallels. parallels is great with full support for 3G graphics on both Win 7 and Ubuntu. My ratings for Windows is 4.2 on parallels but was just 2 on VMware. I like the overall performance of Parallels 5 and it's much better with the Snow Leopard update 10.6.2. I've bought a full license of parallels 5 as an update to my previous license.
Thanks for sharing. I am very happy with Parallels also!
Thanks for the view, I've made some compilation bench between the 2 … conclusion is obvious:-) http://tmenguy.free.fr/TechBlog/?p=481
Any word on whether Parallels have fixed the sticky windows key bugs from v4? Does anyone know how many USB 1.1 devices v5 supports, v4 only allowed 2 USB 1.1 devices which is way too few for my needs. How many USB 1.1 devices does VMware Fusion 3 support?
Thanks for the article! Did you install the x86 or x64 version of Windows 7?
Thanks so much for the comparison! This is just what I needed!
Great comparison, thanks – I'm mulling over the decision right now myself and I think you've swung me back to Parallels!
I installed Parallels 5 on my MacBook Pro and now my MAC it is shutting down in 10 seconds vs. 2 seconds without Parallels 5 software. I'm using Snow Leopard OS.
Does anyone know what is causing this and how to fix it while still having Parallels 5 installed? I love my MAC shutting down in 2 seconds!!!
Does the delayed shut down only happen when you have Parallels running, or does it happen all the time after you installed Parallels?
All the time after I installed Parallels. I did some research online – it seems to be known issue. Now sure how to fix it though.
When I hear VMware could create a virtual machine from a real machine using Bonjour, I was hooked. I have VMWare 2 and got a trial of 3 to give it a shot. I installed the Bonjour client on my old PC I want to get rid of and connected from my mac. That was as far as it got. It would never log in or create the machine. Ok, no problem, they have a stand alone client to create a virtual machine from a real one. I tried this. It crashed on startup. The only suggestion on the VMWare boards that helped was to use the migration client from Parallels and them import into VMWare. At that point, I thought to myself, why use a competitors better product to import into VMWare.
I went and bought a new copy of Parallels and it works fantastic.
For my taste this posting s a bit too lovng towards parallels. I prefer that one, too, but fusion has its benefits as well. Do you get a free copy of parallels for that review?
No, I did not receive a review copy from Parallels. I am a full paying customer of both companies. My review is ethical, true. I feel parallels is the better of the two products.
this is very useful for me, i've started using mac since this year and i'm wondering which software(pd or vm) can run windows faster.
Did you mean 'definitely' rather than defiantly?
Not sure if Parallels does this but Fusion will take your Bootcamp partition and boot into it. I still prefer parallels though so far.
Thanks for the review.
I don't know what you specifically tested for you speed comparison (aside from startup/shutdown which is faster in parallels) but suspend/resume which is probably what most people actually use, is about the same for me (and the same one is not always faster). I run databases on my VM and I consistently get I/O performance nearly the same as physical hardware in VMWare, but Parallels suffers from serious lag. I also notice while running background processes in Parallels (like downloading a big file using IE) the CPU is always around 25% but while doing the same task in VMWare it is only around 2%. I'm kinda up in the air about the whole thing but the main thing that will keep me with VMWare is that I mainly use VM for software development and I can have VMWare running my background tasks without even noticing that it is using resources when it is mostly idle, while Parallels 5 would be constantly grabbing resources for who knows what. VMware also seems more stable, my windows machines will crash sometime in Parallels, but I have never had a crash in VMWare.
Is their any difference when running programs like Allen Bradley PLC software programs?
I do not know. I did did not test that specific software.
I am doing research on running Mac and Win on same Mac system. A significant concern I have is having to re-size either the Mac or Win partition over time and the ability to do so if needed … Is this a concern of others? In the 'old' days, I used Partition Magic on my Win system. What does one do with Fusion or Parallels? (or is this even an issue??). Ideally, I want to install Fusion or Parallels on my Mac to run Win 7, and NOT have to be concerned about partition sizes. Ever!!
Is this possible??
Thanks for your collective insight.
BootCamp is the only program which can't easily change partition sizes. Re-read the “Configuration Options” section of the article.
cool! thanks a lot for that post, it's very useful for me
What about game performance with OpelGL? For example a Game with UT3-Engine.
I am not much of a gamer, so I don’t have any benchmark specs for gaming performance.
Hey Chris…
I have had almost the exact experience as you. I used VMware 3.0 for close to a year and loved it and then one day noticed that Apple was advertising/Selling Parallels 5 on their site so I figured if Apple is recommending it (as I know they do extensive testing of all software with their OS and hardware before ever endorsing), I’ll give it a try and man was I surprised at the improvement in a number of things. Most of all speed and stability. I love how much more stable it is So regardless of having had recently payed to upgrade to the version 3 of VMware I went ahead and spent the money to go Parallels Desktop 5.
Love it!
Thanks for the in depth review/comparison. It sounds like I’ll be going over to Parallels. after a year of Fusion and not having the options I would like and the less than stellar performance, it will be nice to have my ‘Windows’ perform like I want it to. One thing that was left out was gaming performance, Not that I have time to game in Dental College;however, it’s always nice to know what it can do if I were to desire a game.
I also have a 15″ MacBook Pro and have run both Fusion and Parallels on my computer as I am an Interior Design student so I have to run AutoCad, which is only supported by Windows. Upon buying one of these systems, I researched it and at the time found no information supporting one being better than the other. I also asked at the Apple store, and the employees all said that it made absolutely no difference, but they all seemed to prefer Parallels. HOWEVER, after many long hours on the phone with AutoDesk (AutoCad support), Parallels, and Apple, it turns out that if you are running Fusion with AutoCad, AutoCad is NOT supported. The man from AutoDesk read me a list of logs that customers had filled with the same problems and it can cause major issues. Upon speaking with the Apple store, they were sure they could “make it work”. However, I chose to then just change to Parallels 5 (there is a student price as well – 50 rather than 80), I have noticed a HUGE difference. Not only does it work, but its also much faster and in my opinion more seamless.
The bottom line: AutoCad 2010 and VMware Fusion are NOT compatible. Go with Parallels 5!
Thanks. I thought that I’ll never make AutoCAD 2010 works (on VMware fusion)…I guess i’ll have to change for Parallels.
I’m currently running Windows in Bootcamp. Can Parallels be installed in a way that I don’t have to re-install Windows? Thanks.
Parallels 5 is not currently compatible with Firewire yet
Prallels Desktop 5 vs VM Ware Fusion 3:
Allow me to tell you that i use Parallels too and i know it’s faster than VMFusion in common tasks such starting up, shutting down, whatever… which makes us to save precious time, i know! However how’s the performance working on heavy software, such as AutoCAD or SolidWorks, 3D stuff, etc.? Well, i don’t want to be disappointing, even because i’m using parallels for a long time just because of the easier interface and common task “maneuvre”… but i must say that VM Fusion kicks Parallels ass working in AutoCAD. Try moving the cursor around the screen and you note the difference straight away. No lag on Fusion. (end point). The same with SolidWorks. However, it’s so strange i can work better on SolidWorks using virtual machines than using BootCamp even! The same doesn’t happen with AutoCad. Amazing and strange, respectively! Well, both Parallels and fusion are great, but i’m sure if you want performance running AutoCAD, just go VMFusion, even if you can still do it on Parallels but with some lag…
Cheers to all.
Probably all true, but after 30 days, try to get some free tech support from Parallels!
I upgraded to Parallels 6 and lost my WIndows 7.1 virtual machine and cannot get anyone from parallels to help.
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