They both does the same, Virtual Operating System, either for Mac or PC. But what I’m going to review is the Mac Version, though I have Virtual Desktop for the PC, Parallels and VMWare are what is currently installed on my MacBook Air. This is installed on a system that has limited resources.
My MacBook Air Spec:
2.13Ghz Core2Duo
2Gb of Memory
128Gb of Hard Drive Space (SSD Version)
VMWare and Parallels are setup by default. Meaning, I just click on next button during install and it does the what it does to install the software, no customization, not bias. First of all, VMWare and Parallels are both the same price, $70. At least during this writing. During this test, I left both the way it is, no software installed and I just do the basic stuff, like surf the internet with IE, and both are installed with Windows 7. VMWare and Parallels aren’t installed at the same time, I would run out of hard disk space if I do that. So I installed VMWare first and tried it, and here’s my take between the two.
VMWare was decent enough to get things done, such as surfing the internet, checking basic email from Windows Mail and watching YouTube. The integration is nice with Mac, but I think it could be improved. Loading Windows 7 was normal, about 45 seconds till loading was finish. However, whenever I switch back to Mac, and let Windows 7 idle, not suspend or shutdown, my Mac would be slower than normal. Significantly noticeable, up to a point I thought I was running Windows Vista bloated with software. It was still usable, but it was annoying to do anything to a comfortable point. Once I shutdown Windows 7 and go back to Mac, everything was back to Normal. I gained my 1.5Gb of Ram back and CPU wasn’t running as much, and the back of the Mac becomes cooler from the heat.
Parallels; well, I gotta say, Parallels did a good job of seamless integration of Windows 7 and Mac. The Windows Interface is on the top system bar of my Mac, so it’s easier for me to access any software on Windows 7 as I want. So if I need to run IE, I just click on the Windows 7 Start Button and it would be like as if I’m running Windows 7 on my Mac. Even though Parallels claim OpenGL 2.1 and VMWare only up to 1.2, I wasn’t able to test Video Performance other than YouTube. But instead, let’s talk about multi-tasking while running Parallels and Mac at the same time.
Parallels did not slow down my Mac at all, but it did take at least 1.5Gb of Ram, leaving me with just 64mb of Ram left. But both Parallels and OS X compromised between the two making multi-tasking easier on the Mac. Running IE8 was slower than running Safari on the OS X side, probably because Windows 7 requires more than 2Gb of Ram to function best. But once the site is loaded in IE8, it was just as fast as Safari. Loading time was just slower than expected on IE8, such as clicking the link within the site. It wasn’t comfortable surfing the internet with IE8, but YouTube was ok, lags a little, just a tad slower than Safari, enough to draw you away from surfing the internet with Windows 7. Parallels claims it can play Games since it is OpenGL 2.1 compatible, but I haven’t tried.
I also heard reports that my co-worker with his 4Gb of Ram MacBook Pro running VMWare, slowed his computer down and he too prefer Parallels. After doing some more research, other Mac Owners running VMWare on Mac isn’t as good as Parallels. After doing the comparison between the two, looks like Parallels is a keeper. But you be the judge and let me know your experience.
So why use VM over BootCamp? VM is faster when it comes to loading and you can move files around from Desktop to Desktop. So if you have files on your OS X and Windows 7 is running on either Parallels or VMWare Fusion, you can just drag the file or files to either Desktop and it would copy. With BootCamp, you would have different partition that OS X can’t write to and if you load to BootCamp, you have to wait till it load. With VM, you can do other things on your Mac while it’s loading Windows.
But whether it’s BootCamp or VM, your precious hard disk space is taken up. Parallels and VMWare Fusion took at least 50Gb of space. That’s almost half of my hard disk space!
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Eberhard
Eberhard, twitter @powercx, likes to write as a hobby, and he loves the media. Likes to play with gadget toys, plays with any cool Software for smartphone, PC or Mac and writes his own review. His review is unbiased and not sponsored. Even though Powercx.com has been around since '96, he didn't start blogging till '98. His Tech experience is with Cisco Systems and Wells Fargo as an avid backend web developer with JSP, PHP, ASP, CSS, and Javascript as well as a part time Web Designer on the side does not end there.
This site is about all type of gadgets that he will encounter with. From cool Software that comes with the Hardware, or any Hardware that comes with heavy interest in the community. He will be posting at least two post a week.
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