VMWare Fusion vs. Parallels on the Mac

If you’ve read my previous posts, you will see that I’ve installed VMWare server.

This had me intrigued about VMWare Fusion for the Mac. I’ve used Parallels for a while simply because I had one piece of software I was required to use at work, so I tossed it on the laptop. Now I have the need for Stock Brokerage software - much more powerful than the web interface - that requires Windows.

So, Parallels worked fine for me, but I thought I’d give fusion a try.

Unity / Coherence is pretty cool in both. Allows you to integrate the Windows ‘windows’ as part of your Mac environment so that you still feel Mac-ish.

One real gripe is that the Windows Start menu appears at the bottom of the screen. Naturally this is where it should appear, but its a pain in the ass if you have the dock open. I heard there is a hack to the config file for this. I just hid the dock.

Shared Drive - seemed a little easier in Parallels. It actually mounted the Windows drive on the desktop. Fusion - not as easy.

Overall. I don’t know. Fusion just seems a little snappier to me. It runs with no problems. I’ve had no major issues with it.

I had one major problem in Parallels. I installed Quickbooks on it. As soon as I launched the app the Mac immediately rebooted. I had FileVault on that account and my whole user account was trashed. Fortunately I back up, but it was an inconvenience.

One thing I didn’t like about Fusion was that it grabbed the DVD drive and ‘unmounted’ it from my Mac side. I was ripping a DVD on the Mac, when I launched fusion, the drive disappeard.

One BIG thing that I am looking forward to is the ability to grab my files from VMWare server (such as my PBX) and tweak it when I am out on my laptop. I haven’t tried it yet, but should be handy.