By Peter Eysermans — Nov 30, 2008

VMWare Fusion vs Parallels

Unfortunately the images to this post were lost during the migration from Blogengine.Net to WordPress

I have been using a Mac as my main development machine for over a year now. I have been very happy with it, you could call me an Apple fanboy. Because I develop in the .Net framework, and I’m not planning on changing that, I had to find a solution to be able to run Windows on my Mac. There are two options to get that done:

Installing Bootcamp: this implies that you have to reboot your machine to get to Windows
Virtualization: running Windows as a virtual machine on top of Mac OS X

The first reason I changed to Mac was the slick design but after using it intensively I came to realize that that isn’t the strong point of a Mac. The strong point of the Mac is OS X. It’s a robust operating system that doesn’t get in your way. I was so pleased with OS X that I wanted to use my Mac for all general computer use (surfing, email, …) and just use Windows as a shell for Visual Studio. So Bootcamp was no option for me.

The first choice was made, I wanted to work with Virtual Machines to run Windows on my Mac. There are two virtualization solutions on Mac, VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Because a good friend of mine, who has an excellent video production company by the way, recommended me Parallels I went for that solution and never looked back ... until a few days ago.

VMWare Fusion vs Parallels
with 3 comments

Unfortunately the images to this post were lost during the migration from Blogengine.Net to WordPress

Installing Bootcamp: this implies that you have to reboot your machine to get to Windows
Virtualization: running Windows as a virtual machine on top of Mac OS X
The first reason I changed to Mac was the slick design but after using it intensively I came to realize that that isn’t the strong point of a Mac. The strong point of the Mac is OS X. It’s a robust operating system that doesn’t get in your way. I was so pleased with OS X that I wanted to use my Mac for all general computer use (surfing, email, …) and just use Windows as a shell for Visual Studio. So Bootcamp was no option for me.

I was trying to set up a new Parallels Virtual Machine and was installing Windows XP. After 5 tries I had given up. Windows (in Parallels) kept throwing blue screens at me. In the past I had never had this problem. So out of frustration I decided to try VMWare Fusion. I installed it and created my first VMWare Virtual Machine. The first killer feature I noticed is that the desktop and documents is shared between your virtual machine and Mac OS X. It is very easy to copy files between the two.

The perfect situation for me is that I have one Virtual Machine, which I can copy if I want to test something like an early bèta and then delete it when I’m done. In this way I don’t have to install application after application that I don’t use in my Virtual Machine and I can keep my Windows clean. A VMWare virtual machine is only one file, you can copy it and when you boot it VMWare Fusion detects that the VM is copied. A Parallels Virtual Machine exists of several files and is less easier to copy. Another point scored by VMWare Fusion.

While doing some research on the two products, I noticed that Parallels is popular with designers and VMWare Fusion is more used by programmers. The fact that Parallels is so popular is in my opinion because of the design of the product. Starting a virtual machine is very slick, you’ve got rotating windows and stuff like that which makes it a great experience. Developers who use VMWare Fusion are mostly coming from Windows, on which VMWare is already very popular. On top of that, I have the feeling that VMWare Fusion is a little more robust then Parallels. A .Net developer tends to use his virtual machines a bit more thoroughly then a designer who most of the time just uses them to do some cross platform testing. I think that explains why designer prefers Parallels and developers prefer VMWare Fusion.

So I’ve made the switch VMWare Fusion and I’m very happy with it at the moment. Are there any .Net developers on Mac among my readers? Which virtualization platform do you guys use?

There is one thing that almost made me throw VMWare Fusion out of the window. The next screenshot explains it all:

Notice the Install McAfee menu item, I hope VMWare got a lot of money out of it because I really hate it when stuff like this get incorporated into a good product.

Note: I haven’t tested Parallels 4 yet, I wrote this post before it came out.