VMware Fusion4 vs Parallels7 Review

After more than 20 years using PCs, I’ve purchased my first Mac. And I loved it for the first week, then I needed to do some real work. Thank goodness you can now run Windows on a Mac.

While there are many choices, some of which are free, as a hard core ICT dabbler I only considered the really serious options from commercial vendors. They are: 

• VMware Fusion 4
• Parallels 7

So began two weeks of research and testing to pick the best Mac Virtualisation platform for me. It didn’t take long to identify the two key contenders were Fusion4 and Parallels7 and my timing was perfect with new versions of both products just released. Overall verdict:

• VMware Fusion 4 wins for me  (based on cost, cross-platform support & reliability)

Interestingly Parallels is winning the on-line review race at present based on the 20 or so reviews I found and read. Most reviews claim it runs graphics faster and integrates better with the Mac. I can certainly confirm I get a better Windows Experience Index with Parallels (4.6) on my Mac versus Fusion (4.3). But one should never trust reviews alone….and that has cost me $89 as I rushed out and purchased Parallels7 before I had trialled it or Fusion.

My experience with Parallels7 : 

• 5/5 Ease of install, setup, use & features
• 5/5 Graphics Performance (although initial trouble with Adobe on Mac)
• 5/5 Integration with Mac OS
• 2/5 Reliability (one crash on Mac, unworkable for me on PC)
• 2/5 Cost per Mac $89 + $49 per PC

My experience with Fusion4 : 

• 4/5 Ease of install, setup, use & features
• 4/5 Graphics Performance
• 5/5 Integration with Mac OS
• 5/5 Reliability (rock solid on Mac & PC)
• 5/5 Cost for Mac $49 + VMware Player free for PC   

So what let Parallels down. Well one of the key benefits of virtualisation is that when you set up a virtual machine it abstracts the guest OS from the hardware, therefore you should be able to run the same VM almost anywhere. For me I want one VM I can run on my Mac and Gaming PC, therefore the VM must support both a Mac OS and Windows 7 host OS.

Parallels 7 VM worked pretty well on the Mac but I had one lock-up just shutting down a basic Windows VM. My main issue however was trying to move my VM to a Windows PC. First Parallels re-installed Parallel Tools when switching from Mac to Windows (the Fusion VM didn’t need to do this). But my main problem with Parallels is that the Mac generated VM had severe graphics driver problems on the Windows 7 host OS when loaded with Parallels Workstation 6 (trail version). Basically I couldn’t re-run the Windows Experience Index tool which crashed out with graphics driver issues and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 refused to run. Parallels Tech Support suggested a few things, one of which was to uninstall and re-install Parallels tools. This was interesting. If I uninstalled Parallels Tools, everything worked including the Windows Experience Index (which then dropped from 4.6 to 1.0) and Adobe worked. However as soon as I re-installed Parallels Tools the problems re-appeared with the Windows Experience tool and Adobe problems.

At this point I’d had enough and decided to try VMware Fusion which was a pleasure. Fusion was rock solid on the Mac and the VM moved seamlessly to my Windows Gaming Box. With Fusion on the Air I got a slightly lower Windows Performance Index but that is more than off-set by the quality of this product and the free VMware Player ran my Mac generated VM seamlessly. And WOW what a price difference. After my testing I purchased Fusion4 on-line from VMware at $35. So for $35 I can create VMs and run them on multiple home Macs and PCs. The same thing costs hundreds with Parallels. My only other criticism of Fusion4 is that I like the safe mode in Parallels, the ability to say start my VM and discard any changes automatically when it is shut down. This is great for random testing of new applications. Fusion does this through Snapshots but novice users probably aren’t going to get it.

That’s it. If you just want Windows on a Mac. Fusion or Parallels will do it for you and impressively well. For me I now own both products and currently use Fusion4 95% of the time.