Wrong About Fusion--It's a Winner!
In a blog posted a few weeks ago, I stated that I thought Parallels had more features than VMware’s Fusion. Well, I spent a lot of time over the last few days working with VMware’s Fusion; and I have to say I was wrong. I like Fusion a lot better for several reasons.
First, though they are evenly priced in the stores, VMware is still offering $20 off if you buy from them online and from some online retailers. Where Nova seems to be pushing its customers to upgrade to Parallels 3.0 to get Leopard support, VMWare provided Leopard support via an upgrade issued at no cost to the user. The best Nova has done was offer a version two to three upgrade at $50, though there was a window for you to get the upgrade free if you bought Parallels after May 7, 2007. That window is gone. Parallels 3.0, which you must pay full price for, is the only game in town.
Secondly, Fusion seems to be faster than Parallels at accomplishing most tasks. I haven’t performed any official timing to be sure; that’s a strictly subjective judgment. But when booting the Guest OS hosted on an internal volume vice Boot Camp, Fusion seems to boot the OS terribly fast. Like Parallels, Fusion installs a set of “tools” when the OS runs that enhance things like cursor display and graphics performance; but unlike Parallels, Fusion did it automatically when I installed XP under it.
Thirdly and lastly, I was really wrong about Parallels having more features than Fusion. One of the things I wrote about was how much I liked Parallel’s Coherence mode, and I didn’t think Fusion had anything like it. It does! It’s called “Unity” and not only does it make it appear that Windows applications are running on the OS X desktop, but the Windows Start Menu is accessible from VMware’s Menu Bar on the OS X desktop. You don’t have to mess with the Windows’ Start Menu at all!
Unlike Parallels, Fusion also has a setting that enables 3D acceleration. After selecting it, I tried running Windows’ Pinball game. Most of the time, the game ran well with excellent graphics, but occasionally the Windows’ video driver would get reset to 8 bit color, something that would have to be corrected the next time the Windows desktop appeared. I didn’t try anything more rigorous, like one of my flight simulators; but I might do so sometime in the near future!
Overall, Fusion responded very quickly. I could tell the difference between allocating Fusion and its OS 512MB of RAM and 1 GB, the latter being where my set-up is today, and it whizzed along under the latter.
Earlier, I had decided to stay only with Boot Camp to avoid triggering off XP’s activation scheme. That was before I tried Fusion. Now, I’ve reloaded XP and all its applications under Fusion and have deleted my Boot Camp partition. I don’t have any more problems trying to set the right resolution on my MacBook Pro running Boot Camp when hooked to an Apple Cinema Display, and I simplified my overall system set-up. I can access all my Windows applications from my Leopard desktop. Boot Camp is great when you want Windows’ full performance and can stand having the machine dedicated to only Windows for a time; but if you want good Windows’ performance, great features, and easy set-up, try VMware’s Fusion. You can download a trial version that’s good for 30 days at VMware’s website.
First, though they are evenly priced in the stores, VMware is still offering $20 off if you buy from them online and from some online retailers. Where Nova seems to be pushing its customers to upgrade to Parallels 3.0 to get Leopard support, VMWare provided Leopard support via an upgrade issued at no cost to the user. The best Nova has done was offer a version two to three upgrade at $50, though there was a window for you to get the upgrade free if you bought Parallels after May 7, 2007. That window is gone. Parallels 3.0, which you must pay full price for, is the only game in town.
Secondly, Fusion seems to be faster than Parallels at accomplishing most tasks. I haven’t performed any official timing to be sure; that’s a strictly subjective judgment. But when booting the Guest OS hosted on an internal volume vice Boot Camp, Fusion seems to boot the OS terribly fast. Like Parallels, Fusion installs a set of “tools” when the OS runs that enhance things like cursor display and graphics performance; but unlike Parallels, Fusion did it automatically when I installed XP under it.
Thirdly and lastly, I was really wrong about Parallels having more features than Fusion. One of the things I wrote about was how much I liked Parallel’s Coherence mode, and I didn’t think Fusion had anything like it. It does! It’s called “Unity” and not only does it make it appear that Windows applications are running on the OS X desktop, but the Windows Start Menu is accessible from VMware’s Menu Bar on the OS X desktop. You don’t have to mess with the Windows’ Start Menu at all!
Unlike Parallels, Fusion also has a setting that enables 3D acceleration. After selecting it, I tried running Windows’ Pinball game. Most of the time, the game ran well with excellent graphics, but occasionally the Windows’ video driver would get reset to 8 bit color, something that would have to be corrected the next time the Windows desktop appeared. I didn’t try anything more rigorous, like one of my flight simulators; but I might do so sometime in the near future!
Overall, Fusion responded very quickly. I could tell the difference between allocating Fusion and its OS 512MB of RAM and 1 GB, the latter being where my set-up is today, and it whizzed along under the latter.
Earlier, I had decided to stay only with Boot Camp to avoid triggering off XP’s activation scheme. That was before I tried Fusion. Now, I’ve reloaded XP and all its applications under Fusion and have deleted my Boot Camp partition. I don’t have any more problems trying to set the right resolution on my MacBook Pro running Boot Camp when hooked to an Apple Cinema Display, and I simplified my overall system set-up. I can access all my Windows applications from my Leopard desktop. Boot Camp is great when you want Windows’ full performance and can stand having the machine dedicated to only Windows for a time; but if you want good Windows’ performance, great features, and easy set-up, try VMware’s Fusion. You can download a trial version that’s good for 30 days at VMware’s website.
posted by Andy Foster at
7:28 PM
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