I’ve been using Parallels on my MacBook to run a virtual machine with Windows XP on it. Mostly for my Sony eBook reader software and Family Tree Maker (Mac is lacking when it comes to genealogy software).
I was reading some reviews of VMware’s new entry to the market, Fusion.
Fusion has two big advantages over Parallels:
1) it is written in Cocoa, so is completely native and fast.
2) it can use a BootCamp partition as its “virtual” drive.
So after reading about 10 reviews, all of which said essentially “after trying Fusion, I stopped using Parallels”, I decided to take the plunge and switch my MacBook over.
It was a straightforward setup:
1) install BootCamp
2) install Windows XP
3) install Fusion
Although it’s an easy install, it’s time-consuming. I didn’t have time to test out how it compared to Parallels yet. But it *seems* snappier…
Maybe tonight I will re-install XP on my overly cluttered Dell machine… and after that, maybe I’ll install XP on my cat. Mrrow!
=P
I’d love to hear some follow up on any performance differences. I can’t believe that the programming language the app is written in will make much difference, it seems like optimization would have the greatest effect.
Does VMWare do Linux as well? I’ve uses the Linux host in the past and was pretty impressed, but if VMWare can integrate Linux apps into the MacOS like it does Windows, I’d have to buy it.
I haven’t done a lot of testing so far (my uses are fairly modest – Sony Connect for my eBook reader, and Family Tree Maker for genealogy.
VMware Fusion supports a bunch of different OS’s, including several flavors of Linux: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/system_requirements.html#c25836
Here are some benchmarks CNET did: http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9760910-1.html?r=1189189215936