Comments on: Parallels Desktop 5 vs. VMware Fusion 3

By: Chris Lentz

Chris Lentz — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 18:13:09 +0000

I am not much of a gamer, so I don’t have any benchmark specs for gaming performance.

By: atlchris.com_Chris

atlchris.com_Chris — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:17:33 +0000

What about game performance with OpelGL? For example a Game with UT3-Engine.

By: John Scars

John Scars — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:47:53 +0000

cool! thanks a lot for that post, it's very useful for me

By: pwnzord

pwnzord — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:28:16 +0000

BootCamp is the only program which can't easily change partition sizes. Re-read the “Configuration Options” section of the article.

By: 3 Ways to Run Windows on Your Mac - Donna Dalton

3 Ways to Run Windows on Your Mac - Donna Dalton — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:52:13 +0000

[...] Install VMWare Fusion 3 [...]

By: din209

din209 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:52:29 +0000

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.

By: Chris Lentz

Chris Lentz — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:06:51 +0000

I do not know. I did did not test that specific software.

By: duanefry

duanefry — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 01:15:31 +0000

Is their any difference when running programs like Allen Bradley PLC software programs?

By: linuxfreakus

linuxfreakus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:12:01 +0000

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.

By: webPragmatist

webPragmatist — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:15:52 +0000

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.