Parallels 10 or VMware Fusion 7?

Which one is a better choice Parallel 10 or VMware Fusion 7?

For what? Please see the post in my signature about writing a quality post. In short, we need more detail about what you want and what you have.

You didn't provide us with any info regarding which Mac you have or what version of OS X you're running.

As far as I'm aware, both Parallels 10 and Fusion 7 support Yosemite. Most folks who are into games say that Parallels offers better support. VMware Fusion in my opinion is a more polished application.

Don't forget to take a look at the free VirtualBox from Oracle.

Sorry Guys!

2012 MacBook Pro 13", i5 2.5ghz, Crucial 16g RAM, and Crucial 512g SSD, on Yosemite.

Will be using Windows 7 Professional

Will be used mostly for Photo editing, word docs, web browsing, and some gaming, but not much.

Is there some reason you need to perform these task in Windows? Which OS you use is entirely up to you but running these programs in Parallels or Fusion is going to use system resources that could be used to run Mac programs that perform these tasks well.

I'm with Sly. Aside from gaming, most of what you need can be accomplished in OS X just as well as it can in Windows. As for gaming, it might be better to go the Boot Camp route.

I'm coming from a PC and was trying to avoid buying all new software. I own the newest windows Microsoft Office suite, Omnipage suite, and a few others...

You can use Office in a VM without issue - that should run fine (although it might be a pain managing files across OSes unless you use a cloud service or shared folder). If you have an Office 365 account, you can always just download the Mac version as well.

So you prefer VM over Parallels, any particular reasons why?

Oh, I have Office 2013, not the Office 360.

VM is shorthand for virtual machine, not VMWare Fusion.

I use Parallels but only because it was significantly cheaper at the time I was buying VM software. I don't have very sophisticated needs so just about any VM software works for me.

If all you're going to be doing is using software with rather minimal requirements, either will work.

Fusion or Parallels? Fusion!

As new switcher whose Accounts software has to run in Windows, not to mention all of those VBA tools that I have in Office (I can hear the groans from here) I needed Windows 7 and thought that my experience might be useful to others.

Suffice to say, I tried both, and tried to virtualise my existing laptop. It isn't straightforward!

I found that drivers, I think, prevented either of the two programs from virtualising - they both hung or terminated - and I eventually resorted to stripping out software and data that I had already ported across to the Mac. You'll want to do this anyway - as a rule of thumb you'll need as much space on the Mac as used on the Windows machine for the VM.

Eventually Fusion worked, and Parallels still didn't. So I paid up, and am now happily running Fusion from an external HDD. Not perhaps the most effective for speed, but for those odd occasions when I want it it is there, and works well.

--

Incidentally, I should add that I bought Office for Mac, and use that natively as the experience is much better once you've worked out where Microsoft hid everything you are used to using. Office on the VM is only used when I want to run the tools. And I mapped my vmhost to a Windows drive, so that I can still keep all of the files in one place - on the Mac - and just use the VM as a software platform.

Well that sucks, I just received Parallels 10 in the mail. Hopefully it will work for me!

I run Office 2010 just fine in a vmWare Fusion virtual machine, Parallels 10 works equally well. Both do some things better, some things worse. FWIW, I just share my files with my VM and deal with file management that way.

I shouldn't think that 2013 would be any different..

BigMike75 said:

Which one is a better choice Parallel 10 or VMware Fusion 7?

Click to expand...

I like Parallels

A Help for better selection of either Parallel or Fusion

Hello Dear Respect Friends,

Actually, I am new on Mac. I have now a new MacBook Pro with the following specs.:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro12,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i5
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP121.0167.B14
SMC Version (system): 2.28f7

[Hard Disk Size: 250 GB]

I am using some programs that have not versions to be run under Mac and work only under Windows environment.

I am not a high professional one to understand all points from the programming point of view, but I've surfed on the google search to read reviews for both Parallel and Fusion.

I found that nearly both of them are very near in most performances, may be I found that Parallel is Faster but not more stable than Fusion.
I do not know which of the current versions (Parallel 11) Vs Fusion 8 is better.

Both are nearly in the range of $80-$100

Both support my current OS El Capitan

One of the most important programs urges me to use VM is SDL Trados Studio, a program needs a good memory and fast processing for the data.

Also, I need to collect all my work on one device. I am installing all Mac compatible applications (Office 2016, others) that can work normall on Mac, but the most important program that is needed in my Translation business is the most important one.

I do apologize for the long description, and will highly appreciate your advice asap.
Thanks for your time.

Best,
Ehab

Hi Ehab,

I don't know that I can tell you what works for you - I can only tell me what worked for me.

To start with, you have the option of Boot Camp. If you are not interested in running Windows and Mac side by side, then you can just install Windows in a separate area of your disk called a Boot Partition, and then when you turn your Mac on you can either load up the Mac operating system, or the Windows operating system. This wasn't the right option for me, because I wanted Windows to sit alongside the Mac, and be able to use shared files and folders - in particular Office 2016 for Mac wouldn't run any of my (Windows-based) code in Excel. That would only run in Windows so I needed to be able to swap back and forth.

If you do need a VM, then by all accounts both are as good as each other. I chose Fusion simply because it was the first one that could capture my Windows laptop successfully. You realise, I hope, that you need a valid Windows licence whether you use a VM or Boot Camp - and Windows is fixed to particular IDs in your processor. The migration helpers in Fusion and Parallels capture all the information to allow those IDs to "transfer" to your Mac. However, I had lots of problems with timeouts and failures, so my solution was to copy data files, documents, pictures, across manually and delete all of those files from the laptop. Then I also uninstalled all of the programs that I had Mac versions for (although not Office, as I said). Then I gradually removed printers, and things like that, until I had a version that would happily package up.

You don't say what size disk drive you have. That is also a crucial factor. The VM takes up space on your Mac - roughly the same amount as the used size of the Windows disk, plus an equivalent to the size of the memory. So if your Windows data and programs takes up 150GB, and you want to VM to have 2GB of RAM, you will need at least 152GB of free space on the Mac. You can run the VM off an external disk, but it is slower to start. I unfortunately chose a 256GB SDD, which is nice and fast, but I do seem to spend all my time archiving things in order to keep enough free space on it.

For setup, I can only talk about Fusion. I can allocate as much or as little of my Mac's RAM and processors to the VM as I wish. It is a trade-off. You aren't going to want to allocate ALL of your Mac to the VM, but if you have hungry Windows applications then you might need to up it from the defaults. I have found this to be quite straightforward. I have also mapped Windows folders onto the Mac, too - so everything sits on my Mac, but can be accessed from the VM. It would be safer to isolate it completely, but I know what I am doing and prefer the benefits to the risk.

One final point is updates. I have seen a number of users complain that every time an OS update comes along, Fusion (I haven't looked at Parallels) require you to buy a new version of the software. If this matters to you, then look at the update policy of each one.

Anyhow, I hope it goes well for you. I am pleased with my system, although it took a while to get used to the Mac, and the operating system isn't as error-free as some of the Apple fanboys would have you believe. Still, it is still a much nicer system than Windows 8 or 10, and with the VM I can have the best of both worlds.

Regards,
Stuart

Dear Stuart,

Many thanks for this nice "two cents" regarding my query and taking the time to explain your experience, this is highly appreciated my dear.

Your experience and advices will be highly considered along with coming replies and experiences!

Many many thanks for your time.

best,
Eh