Programs for running Windows

It seems that all the paid websites or ones with heavy advertisements like Parallels but what has won the battle amongst users? Especially new to Mac users.

Thanks

VMware which is like their main competitor. Then there is virtualbox which is free. Probably another one I'm forgetting.

Thank you for the quick response.
I am feeling pretty dumb when asking this but I only see Virtualbox installs on Windows to run OS X not the reverse.
I tried Crossover just to run IE7 (i have to to access my company sites) but it does not install thoroughly.

I feel really dumb for asking these questions considering all I have done with PC but I have to.

I have Parallels on one machine and VMWare on another. They are about the same. I don't use either that much, but they both do Windows well. They tend to leapfrog each other, so "which is better?" has different answer depending on who leaped who last.

Understand, thank you for your responses. I ail try VMware for 30 days and see what happens.
Thank you again

A lot depends on what you intend to run in Windows. Parallels for the most part will run Windows games a bit better and faster than VMWare. However, VMWare is easier to install and has better support. If what you need is fairly generic, I recommend the free VirtualBox from Oracle. Not many frills and somewhat harder to setup and get running right, but does the job well and it is free after all.

Download LINK

Thats a huge help!!
Thanks a bunch, I am making a very big effort to only use it to run IE 7 and my company's proprietary software. Those are the only two things that I will be working on through it so I am going to try the free version of VMware first.
If I find I dont like it I will go the Oracle route.
You guys are great, thanks for the responses and I hope you all have great holiday season.

Perhaps the free VM software a great, but I would suggest using a paid solution because if a company is charging, they might be more likely to support it better, improve it more often. There are instances where this is not true, but it is rare. In short, free removes the $$ incentives and humans/companies mostly are motivated by financial gain. So my suggestion would be to try Parallel, or VMWar's solutions.

lovcom said:

Perhaps the free VM software a great, but I would suggest using a paid solution because if a company is charging, they might be more likely to support it better, improve it more often. There are instances where this is not true, but it is rare. In short, free removes the $$ incentives and humans/companies mostly are motivated by financial gain. So my suggestion would be to try Parallel, or VMWar's solutions.

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Not entirely true in most cases. The suggestion that Open Source is somehow lacking in features does the Open Source developers a disservice.

VirtuallBox was created by Sun and is taken over by Oracle now. So big companies were/are backing the product with active development. Now while Parallels and VMWare Fusion are focusing on getting the 3D graphics better for gaming, VirtualBox hasn't focused much on that.

Depending on the application (running a simple Windows application, for example), VirtualBox will function perfectly fine and for free..

There are certainly some AWESOME free apps out there (not necessarily just emulation apps for Windows)…that get updated all the time (maybe even more often & faster…than paid for programs). Many times it depends on the "passion" of the developer!

"OnyX" is certainly one of the apps. that falls into this category!

- Nick

Raz0rEdge said:

Not entirely true in most cases. The suggestion that Open Source is somehow lacking in features does the Open Source developers a disservice.

VirtuallBox was created by Sun and is taken over by Oracle now. So big companies were/are backing the product with active development. Now while Parallels and VMWare Fusion are focusing on getting the 3D graphics better for gaming, VirtualBox hasn't focused much on that.

Depending on the application (running a simple Windows application, for example), VirtualBox will function perfectly fine and for free..

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No, sorry you misunderstood.

Just because a big company backs a product does not guarentee the product is good.

This is not to suggest that Oracle's solutuon is bad, and in fact it might be great. But that product of Oracles is not a core product, and it was inherited from Sun, and is a product out there in the periphery and not a focus of Oracle. We can all agree that Oracle's solution is bettered by Parallel's and vmWare's solutuons, both paid solutions, and this proves my point. And for the asking price of those two paid solutions, they're almost "free" as the cost is very little.

My comments are general, and I did not paint all free solutions as lacking, nor did I do any diservice to any developers as you stated.

One need only look at the oodles of free apps in iTunes, and the Google Store to see just how horrible many of them are, in comparison to many of the paid apps. Of course there are exceptions but few.

lovcom said:

We can all agree that Oracle's solution is bettered by Parallel's and vmWare's solutuons, both paid solutions, and this proves my point.

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I don't think everyone agrees at all. Some free products are exceptional and in many cases, they can be far superior to products that require payments. Look at web browsers for example. Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera (all free) are all arguably better than something like iCab. 98.61% of web users use those aforementioned free browsers (along with IE) - if paid products were truly better, free products with corporate backing wouldn't dominate.

lovcom said:

And for the asking price of those two paid solutions, they're almost "free" as the cost is very little.

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Any price is too much when free tools more than do the job. Virtualbox can easily run Windows and thus IE7. Why pay for something when the free tool does the job just as well?

lovcom said:

One need only look at the oodles of free apps in iTunes, and the Google Store to see just how horrible many of them are, in comparison to many of the paid apps. Of course there are exceptions but few.

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There are a lot of terrible apps that require payment just as there are a whole collection of fantastic free apps. There isn't a trend between price and quality.

vansmith said:

I don't think everyone agrees at all. Some free products are exceptional and in many cases, they can be far superior to products that require payments. Look at web browsers for example. Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera (all free) are all arguably better than something like iCab.

Any price is too much when free tools more than do the job. Virtualbox can easily run Windows and thus IE7. Why pay for something when the free tool does the job just as well?

There are a lot of terrible apps that require payment just as there are a whole collection of fantastic free apps. There isn't a trend between price and quality.

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I'll have to disagree on all your points.

Perhaps our perspectives are different.

I write business software and I suggest solutions to my clients. The solutions I suggest absolutely have to be the very best for them. They got to work! This is most often the case with paid solutions that are more likely to have on going support, on going fixes, and changes.

You often get what you pay for.

And for the 3rd time, I never said free is always bad, yet you and others choose to hearing just that! ;-)

lovcom said:

And for the 3rd time, I never said free is always bad, yet you and others choose to hearing just that! ;-)

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I don't think that's it at all. On internet forums…broad generalizations will almost always get the opposite response than you expect (not everyone agrees).

- There will be folks who have had great and terrible experiences with paid for software.
- There will be folks who have had great & terrible experiences with free software.

It sounds like you have had better experiences overall with "paid for software". Other folks may have had better experiences with free software.

As you can see…an individuals experience & perspective is what really counts when it comes to opinions.

- Nick

p.s. I agree…there are lots of "crappy" free stuff out there…and if someone was to do a statistical analysis…the overall quality of most paid for apps is probably better than the quality of most free apps.

lovcom said:

I write business software and I suggest solutions to my clients. The solutions I suggest absolutely have to be the very best for them. They got to work! This is most often the case with paid solutions that are more likely to have on going support, on going fixes, and changes.

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Ah, but you're missing my point (and Raz0r's) - free software is not unsupported. In fact, many free software projects have a tremendous amount of support and in some ways, better support than corporate controlled projects. This is why corporations sometimes hand control over to free software groups. For example, Adobe handed over control over Flex to The Apache Foundation.

You're also making it sound as if free software doesn't work. Just because something requires a fee doesn't mean it will automatically work.

On going support and fixes? Not really. A corporation can cut support anytime they want. If something is open sourced, support is simply moved to different people if someone drops out.

vansmith said:

If something is open sourced, support is simply moved to different people if someone drops out.

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MAYBE.

Still waiting on the community to pick up and equal VisualHub, or for that matter Perian.

True, it's not a guarantee. However, at least the possibility is there. If a corporate entity decides to stop maintaining a project, there's no hope unless they release the code (as Netscape did).

vansmith said:

Ah, but you're missing my point (and Raz0r's) - free software is not unsupported. In fact, many free software projects have a tremendous amount of support and in some ways, better support than corporate controlled projects. This is why corporations sometimes hand control over to free software groups. For example, Adobe handed over control over Flex to The Apache Foundation.

You're also making it sound as if free software doesn't work. Just because something requires a fee doesn't mean it will automatically work.

On going support and fixes? Not really. A corporation can cut support anytime they want. If something is open sourced, support is simply moved to different people if someone drops out.

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Actually, the trend is that most freeware is more likely to offer spotty support, and have quality issues. This is not to say all freeware is like this, but most.

I've been developing on several platforms for 34 years and have kept my skills very fresh throughout that time, so I've seen it all and then some. You can cherry pick to show how some freeware does offer great quality and support, but that does not disprove the fact that most of it is cr@p. When you require core solutions that support an enterprise, you're almost always better off going the paid for route, and with few exceptions.

You'll not understand this unless you deliver core solutions to enterprises that hold you legally bound should things go bad.

So cherry pick away, but know that you will pick the exceptions and not the rule

lovcom said:

Actually, the trend is that most freeware is more likely to offer spotty support, and have quality issues. This is not to say all freeware is like this, but most.

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Freeware is not open source. Two very different paradigms of development and distribution.

lovcom said:

I've been developing on several platforms for 34 years and have kept my skills very fresh throughout that time, so I've seen it all and then some. You can cherry pick to show how some freeware does offer great quality and support, but that does not disprove the fact that most of it is cr@p.

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Cherry picking? Is there any number of projects that I could provide that would illustrate my point?

Doesn't disprove the fact that most of it is bad? That's quite the generalization grounded in absolutely no facts. Do you really believe that most of the open source software is terrible? Really?

lovcom said:

When you require core solutions that support an enterprise, you're almost always better off going the paid for route, and with few exceptions.

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That must be why 94% of the world's fastest supercomputers use free software based solutions (source), why 8 of the top 10 most reliable web servers on the planet run Linux or FreeBSD (source), why 69.13% of the web runs on open source server software (source) and why more than 70% of the mobile smartphones in the world run open source operating systems (source). Let's also not forget that all of the top 10 programming languages are open source or have available standards.

If the paid for route is clearly the better choice, how do you account for the overwhelming dominance of open source platforms in critical and commercial products?

lovcom said:

You'll not understand this unless you deliver core solutions to enterprises that hold you legally bound should things go bad.

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You assume I don't?

lovcom said:

So cherry pick away, but know that you will pick the exceptions and not the rule

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How many examples would you like? I'd be more than happy to provide as many as you'd like. As I said earlier, is there any magical number I could get to that would make clear how wrong your assertions are?