VMware Fusion

Zitat

The level of integration and ease of use for both virtualization software was quite impressive, with Fusion's Unity having the visual edge. Even though Coherence may not look as nice in Mac OS X, lacking the crowd pleasing Expose and Spotlight integration, Parallels Desktop has the necessary functions while its multiple snapshots support is clearly superior to the one snapshot allowed under Fusion. VMware's enterprise experience comes through with its extensive support for both 32-bit and 64-bit operating system and most importantly for advanced users, SMP support for virtual machines. Both software have DirectX support, though Parallels has the added support for OpenGL applications. Migrating your PC to the Mac is also made easy, with programs (Parallels Transporter and VMware Converter) available for both to bring your PC and all its data over to the Mac.

In terms of performance, our 2.0GHz MacBook with 1GB of RAM fared quite poorly. Compared to a native Windows partition like Boot Camp, both virtualization software suffered from delays and lags and while Fusion should have the edge here based on its SMP support, it's not as obvious on our admittedly basic MacBook and when executing simple tasks like office productivity applications and playing media files. More intensive applications like graphics or video editing should give Fusion the chance to show its performance edge and there are some benchmarks online which seem to suggest so. Definitely a better equipped MacBook or MacBook Pro would show off better useability, but unfortunately the outcome wasn't as positive as we had hoped for with entry level hardware.

Hardware requirements aside, we would still highly recommend that anyone who has the slightest interest in Windows applications and on a Mac, give virtualization a spin. Those who are considering switching over to the Mac platform should also be looking at these software. There are many advantages to virtualization, from the ability to run multiple operating systems to having secure environments and convenient backups. Depending on the individual, such features could be more important than the performance penalties. If you really need to run Windows without any handicap, there's always Boot Camp to fall back on.