Virtualization is becoming more and more popular even in the industrial world as I could see on the ITnT trade fair a few weeks ago. I for myself also decided recently to give it a try because I had to work on a word document and I didn’t want to switch between OpenOffice (running on Linux or on my Mac) or the Mac version of MSOffice and the Windows version. So I decided to install Windows on my Intel based iMac.
While I knew VMware from working with it on Linux and Windows before, I also knew that Parallels has been primarily developed for the Mac. Both provide a trial version for free download, so which of them should I give the try?I decided to use both, but started with Parallels. Maybe it’s because of my very old WindowsXP version or because of the many USB devices that were connected during install, but the install was not easy and hung several times. So I started Windows installation in the virtual machine again and again, which just always got some steps further, until I finally managed to get a running Windows! Of course this did not lead to a good first impression of Parallels.
But after that, running applications including Word in the virtual machine worked without any problems. I just didn’t manage to access a USB harddrive from within the virtual machine.
So I decided to also install the trial version of VMware Fusion. Here the Windows installation succeeded in one step. Interesting… The applications run in the same good way as with Parallels (but I had to take care not to have both virtual machines running at the same time! ;-)). And: The problem with the USB harddrive existed also here, so this is nothing special with Parallels, I guess.
Both allow for full screen display and a special mode where only the windows are shown as if they were just applications running directly on the Mac. One difference I noticed very soon: Parallels better integrated into the Mac OS desktop by means of registering file types with the Parallels guest applications, e.g. Word-Documents could be opened by just clicking on them and then Parallels started Windows and Office. But this is just one thing that I didn’t want or needed.
Ok, so but what’s the conclusion? I think they’re both good, but I guess I like VMware a little more. Considering the prices for simple and single user editions they are both the same ($79,90).
About a comparison on Windows or Linux I cannot tell anything yet but I want also test this when I found time (i.e. testing Parallels as for VMware I already know how well it works!).