VMWare's Fusion begins private beta

Parallels' current beta which can be downloaded from VersionTracker has preliminary boot camp raw disk support for Windows XP. Parallels can run VM's concurrently, and will always run better then VMware because it uses the VT extensions of the Core Duo while VMware's shared source base and OS abstraction methods to enumerate virtual processors is slowed by the host operating system and memory management of that operating system, may it be Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. There is a conversion tool on the latest beta of Parallels which will convert over VirtualPC and VMware Disk Images. The VMDK format is an open specification and can be adopted by any virtualization product that respects trademarks and copyrights of VMware. Parallels runs Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows, and various Linux distributions better then VMware on Windows or Linux for the most part, with the ACPI support being the only fault. Parallels even offers full Vista support while VMware has been living under a rock and still sits on Workstation 5.5 and Fusion beta with "Experimental" tag appended to Vista. VMware's only features over Parallels are: Better established with more money to buy out competition and institute patents, Snapshots (Useful for developers and servers), and a more mature virtual BIOS implementation. The latest stable version does not have any problems, and I run it constantly on a 17" MacBook Pro (First Generation, 2GB Ram), and 24" iMac (2GB Ram) on Mac OS X 10.4.8. I also use boot camp for games, and welcome virtual GPU support, but don't expect that to be possible for a few years folks, it's too complex to implement. You won't ever see Mac OS X in VM's, even with EFI and TPM chip support Apple won't allow it. The OSX86Project for nopping out EFI instructions is weak at best, not to mention illegal, unstable, and very lacking in terms of supporting the "Just Works" philosophy. Apple sold their OS to 3rd party companies using their chips and they went down to less then 5 dollars a stock. Apple will never make OS X available to commodity PC's, they make 90% of their income on hardware alone. (iPod and Mac)

> The main feature (in my book) that VMWare
> could offer to get a leg up on Parallels
> would be booting from a Boot Camp partition,
> obviating the need for separate Boot Camp
> and virtual machine environments.

did you guys not get the news? parallels just released a new beta that offers not only the ability to use your bootcamp partition, but also gives you drag+drop between windows and mac, "coherance" (hides all but active windows...imagine interleaved osx/windows windows )...and more.

hop on over to the parallels forum. vmware has a way to catch up. given they're owned by emc (who is allowing retrospect for mac to wither), i'm not interested in vmware at all. all the support you could ever need is there at the parallels forum - an incredible amount of feedback from vendor, developers, programmers and power users. vmware can't touch it. :)

don montalvo, nyc
curmudgeon at large

Parallels is working great for me. They keep adding features quickly, so they know the race is on. I'm using a 2GHz Core Duo w/ 2Gigs RAM. Run XP, Vista RC1, SUSE, Puppy, Knoppix, and more all at once. OK, not ALL at once, but several at a time. Only limit seems to be RAM. There's a note that Parallels can use VMware & VirtualPC drive images, but I haven't tested either.

VMware:
-Drag & Drop from host or between VMs.
-Undoable disks... install software and don't commit HD changes until you're sure you want to. Instead of making a 7Gig Vista copy to test in, you just abandon the undoable changes if you don't want to commit them. And you can even reboot repeatedly before deciding.
-Multiple processors remains to be seen, never used VMware on a Multi Processor machine.

Both have really good products. Both run in all 3 major OSes (or will soon). I've run both. The GUI for Parallels is nicer. It could still use some work, but overall it's more user friendly, and compliments the mac. But VMware's new Fusion could match or surpass that if it's done right.

I'd love to beta test VMware too, so if you have connections: william {at] helpMeDude }dot{ com to contact me.

Parallels is deficient in several area. Lack of customer support. Only implements one CPU in a VM. Unstability with multiple VMs. Buggy USB 1.0, and no USB 2.0. Implements only a single network card. No ACPI support. Users reported these deficiencies to Parallels since the public beta nearly a year ago, yet they are still present in the current version. I am certain Fusion will have none of these deficiencies, so many Parallels users will be compelled to switch.

A few major complaints I have with Parallels which might make me switch over to Fusion:

1. Extremely poor user support

2. Lack of USB 2.0 implementation

3. Incomplete USB 1.1/1.2 imlementation. My Garmin Forerunner 205 since the first public release of Parallels does not work. Despite numerous updates since then, Parallels continues with extremeley poor USB implementation.

Thoroughly disappointed with Parallels. Thank God I bought Parallels at the discount price when it first came out.

Why hasn't anyone been crowing about USB 2.0? That is, without a doubt, my biggest gripe about Parallels. If VMWare offers true USB 2.0 from the get-go, I'm all over it.

Unless they have DirectX support, I have absolutely no reason to switch from Parallels. They were here first and they got my money. Better be more than just the same or they will be irrelevent for those that already bought parallels.

Competition is great, but yeah, I'm also confused about what's different here.

My main concern is how multi-monitor and OpenGL/DirectX support will play out in the virtualized software, since these are generally cases where the OS matters a lot. It sounds as though OpenGL support *is* planned for Parallels, which would be great.

Then again, I know this is overkill, what most people want to do is virtualize their accounting software and keep their Mac. ;)

Some people in this comments thing should pay attention:

Parallels already does Clipboard sharing. Copy anything to the Clipboard on OSX and wham, it's there on the Clipboard inside the VM.

Parallels only uses one core of the Core 2 Duo because that's what it's designed to do; that is a basic tenet of VT-x - it doesn't use both cores. VT-x allows one core of the dual cores to be used and that's why under Parallels you get such a massive boost in performance compared to non-VT-x enabled machines - one core of the two is assigned high priority to the VM itself allowing for near native speeds in the VM.

Parallels doesn't work? Well, go buy a real Mac and stop running OSx86 on your PC and maybe you'll have better success.

The person that commented on using the hard drive natively and not needing Boot Camp would be wise to pay attention to the entire reason for Parallels: running one operating system inside another. If people want BootCamp that's what it's there for, if not then Parallels and now VMWare can fit that bill. Not everyone wants to reboot to use Windows/Linux/etc, hence virtualization.

And those thinking they'll get a massive speed boost in performance of some kind for using the hard drive natively should pay more attention: even if you can use directly native hard drive access, it still has to be done through virtualization of the drive interface meaning it's still going to be just as fast as it is currently inside the VM. There's no legitimate reason to do native disk access, it works just fine as is now and will continue to work just fine in the future.

Sure, USB access would be nice but I don't see the issue aside from speed - I already have USB access under Parallels, I don't know why you don't.

One extra advantage VMWare has over Parallels, is that they sit so heavily on the market on Linux and Windows. I work as a consultant where virtualization is used to save some time on software installation and configuration, as we work on different projects.

That means I have to run the virtual machines that have been prepared for me - and these are for VMWare and there nothing I can do about that. I have tried to convert a VMWare machine to Parallels by using harddisk ghosting to duplicate the harddisk, and even if the harddisk is converted to Parallels format this way (which takes hours), I still have to repair the operating system before first boot, as the virtual hardware differs between Parallels and VMWare.

In short, I have to jump through quite a few hoops to get to work on my Mac with the virtual machines i have to work on. If Fusion supports VM's from VMWare (and it would be crazy if not) I wont use Parallels much more, even if I have paid for a registred copy.