An Architect's View

53 responses so far ↓

• 1 Matt Woodward // Aug 6, 2007 at 5:53 PM

  I also took VMWare Fusion for a semi-rigorous test drive today, and overall I'm more impressed with VMWare Fusion than I am with Parallels. I've been using Parallels for quite a while now, and it's fantastic, but I decided for $79 it isn't bad to have both Parallels and VMWare Fusion. I'll be converting my main XP Pro machine from Parallels to VMWare Fusion tonight.
  
  Main reasons for switching for me are the improved performance/lower CPU utilization, the better integration with cmd-tab and Expose, and the Unity feature is far better than Parallels Coherence mode in my opinion.

• 2 Raymond Camden // Aug 6, 2007 at 6:18 PM

  Freaky, I did the same test today as well. I had a few problems...
  
  1) No simple way to increase the hard drive size. Turns out there is a command line tool, but it took me a while to find it.
  
  2) To get Windows to recognize the drive change (I had installed Windows already), I had to use a Gparted ISO. That _would_ have been simple, but it was nearly impossible ot hit F2 to enter the boot menu. It would boot so fast I kept missing it.
  
  3) I finally got it working, but the OS locked my mouse. I had to hit my power button to put my machine to sleep to get the mouse back.
  
  Now that I'm past that though I'm looking forward to giving it a try. It seems to react a bit nicer than Parallels does.

• 3 Chris // Aug 6, 2007 at 6:30 PM

  Parallels is a memory hog. I have 2gb of RAM. Running just Mac OS X and Firefox, I use 720mb. Running Parallels concurrently, I am using 1.44gb total. If I do the math correctly, Parallels is using 724mb of memory, doubling the previous used memory. Statistics provided by Activity Monitor. I have yet to use VMware Fusion.

• 4 Sixten // Aug 6, 2007 at 7:45 PM

  I'm very curious as well, since it seems like my need to run Windows may come back at some point. In the mean time, there's a review up at Macintouch:
  
  http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/vmware.html
  
  

• 5 Russ Johnson // Aug 6, 2007 at 7:49 PM

  I havent tried the VMWare product yet but I too have been tempted. I love Parallels, just wish it didnt consume so many cycles just sitting idle. On my Core 2 Duo MBP with 2 GB of ram, Parallels running XP uses around 27% CPU according to Activity Monitor. Thats a little high to me especially while your developing.
  
  I may have to give the VMWare app a try as well. Do you know if you can migrate a parallels VM over the the VMWare app?

• 6 Sean Corfield // Aug 6, 2007 at 9:19 PM

  @Sixten, thanx for posting that link - very interesting review, as are all the reader comments on both Parallels and VMware!

• 7 Jeff Coughlin // Aug 6, 2007 at 10:06 PM

  I have been using Parallels on my Core 2 Duo MBP for a little over a month now. I read that both Parallels and VMWare Fusion can read a Boot Camp partition allowing the user to switch back and forth between the programs without a problem.
  
  Its been working great with Parallels since I got the MBP, and when VMWare Fusion was finally released I decided to give it a try.
  
  Thats when everything went funky.
  
  After loading up VMWare it recognized the Boot Camp partition as I'd hoped. I told it to go ahead and load it. Vista (Business) started loading (yippy) and then rebooted. It did this again and again.
  
  So I stopped VMWare, rebooted my Mac and tried to load Boot Camp. Same reboot/loop. To solve the problem I loaded up the Mac OS and ran Vista from Parallels again. From then on everything has run as expected (including loading Vista from Boot Camp).
  
  I'm guessing this has something to do with Parallel's drivers it installed in Vista. If I have time again, I'll research this more and see if I can get them both to see the partition just fine (so I can have the choice of which program to load for whatever my needs are for the day).

• 8 Sean Corfield // Aug 6, 2007 at 10:19 PM

  @Jeff, yeah, that's actually mentioned amongst the Parallels problems because it messes with the Boot Camp Windows install. If you boot up your MBP and select Windows, then reboot and select Mac OS X, then fire up VMware... it will run Boot Camp just fine (as long as you don't use the Boot Camp partition from Parallels).

• 9 Jeff Coughlin // Aug 6, 2007 at 10:35 PM

  Wow. Thanks for the tip! I'll give it a try tomorrow.

• 10 John Troyer // Aug 6, 2007 at 11:16 PM

  @Russ: you can convert a Parallels VM to Fusion, but by default Parallels uses IDE disks and Fusion SCSI, so the resulting VM can be slow. Check out the Fusion forum for more details: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=97125

• 11 Nitai Aventaggiato // Aug 7, 2007 at 12:21 AM

  I have been using Parallels for a long time, but it always felt like a "good application" but not the "best". Then Fusion was in beta and I used it from day one on.
  
  Simply said, it "feels" much better and runs smoother. But for me/us as a company the most killer "feature" is that we can now tap into the VMWare Appliance world. Meaning, we can also generate some Linux distro, put our tools on it and just istribute it. Someone does not have VMWare installed then it is no problem, because there is the free VMWare player.
  
  WMWare is used by almost anybody in the industry and thus using it just feels right (I am simply writting from a company level and not private).

• 12 Trond Ulseth // Aug 7, 2007 at 1:06 AM

  Has anyone noted any diferences in USB support between the two?
  
  My wife has some Windows only software that uses USB keys/dongles, and all of a sudden (I suspect after a minor upgrade) Parallels states that the USB is in use by some other program, and thus my wife can not work from home anymore. I'm getting ready to try with Boot Camp (which I will do anyway), but it might be that VMWare is a good option as well?

• 13 Jeff Self // Aug 7, 2007 at 5:12 AM

  Nitai,
  
  You bring up a good point about using the VMware appliance. It would be real nice to see Adobe get involved in this. Just imagine a VMware appliance that has Ubuntu, ColdFusion 8 Developer, Eclipse and CFEclipse already installed, along with a database like PostgreSQL or MySQL. This would be awesome.
  
  But Adobe would have to actually support Ubuntu first of all. I still find it unbelievable that they don't support the most widely used distro of Linux. I'm so over this corporate mentality of having to run only on "Enterprise" versions of Linux.
  
  But enough ranting. Lets convince Adobe that this would be a great idea.

• 14 nitai Aventaggiato // Aug 7, 2007 at 7:37 AM

  Jeff,
  
  Thank you. I just go with CentOS (http://www.centos.org/) when there is a "enterprise" only restriction.
  
  From Adobe's view, I can understand that they only support certain platforms. Especially with Linux the kernel and other libraries are bound to change more often and would "break" a application quite fast with a update. Thus enterprise distributions are quite save for a software company since they only update when most of the applications have been tested with.
  

• 15 Bryan // Aug 7, 2007 at 7:39 AM

  Has anyone tried VirtualBox VM? Just found it yesterday. http://www.virtualbox.org

• 16 Sean Corfield // Aug 7, 2007 at 8:35 AM

  @Bryan, I tried QEMU some time back (VirtualBox is one of several VMs based on QEMU in some form) and found it very slow and clunky by comparison with Parallels and VMware Fusion. VirtualBox may well work better than QEMU but from reading the documentation it looks very basic in terms of functionality.

• 17 Bryan // Aug 7, 2007 at 11:09 AM

  @Sean, WellI I had to give it shot and the results confirm what you said. It does have one thing Parallels doesn't (at least from an Ubuntu stand point), it does support shared folders. The drawback is is consumes roughly double the ram. Sitting idle (just logged in) VirtualBox consumed 412MB compared to Parallels 222MB. Opening FF and browsing to a few pages showed both VMs use more ram and not release it. Other than shared folders the only other thing VirtualBox did better the Parallels was the fact it would actually unload the guest OS (Ubunutu) without freezing.

• 18 Bryan // Aug 7, 2007 at 2:07 PM

  Ok. Just for the heck of it I installed Fusion and did a little comparison. Here is what Activity Monitor Reported:
  
  No VM running:
  --------------
  Process Real Memory
  Windows Server 20.16
  kernel_task 96.05
  
  Ubuntu Running (no apps open):
  Parallels
  ---------
  Process Real Memory
  parallels 222.82
  Windows Server 138.83
  kernel_task 139.37
  
  Fusion
  ------
  Process Real Memory
  vmwar-vmx 313.64
  vmwar 25.06
  WindowsServer 25.88
  kernel_task 96.64
  
  Thought I would post this in case anyone was interested. If not, pardon the interruption.
  

• 19 Pierre Lefranc // Aug 7, 2007 at 4:09 PM

  Bryan,
  
  Thanks for the real memory numbers. They show Fusion is much better than Parallels:
  
  1) Fusion uses 40 MB _less_ RAM than Parallels when you do the total.
  
  2) The physical RAM used by Fusion is properly mapped in their userland process (vmware-vmx), whereas the physical RAM used by Parallels is partially mapped in the kernel and the Window Server, thus polluting their address spaces and reducing the performance of all other Mac OS applications.
  
  All in all, I'm not surprised: Fusion is based on VMware Workstation 6's robust virtualization engine, which inherited the memory sharing feature from VMware ESX Server: it if finds pages that have the same content in a VM or between VMs, it can alias them, thus reducing the amount of physical RAM it needs.
  
  Maybe Parallels will catch up when they finally deliver their server product, but it might be too little too late for them.

• 20 Maxim Porges // Aug 7, 2007 at 7:27 PM

  VMWare is MUCH easier on the CPU when idle, and just feels more polished. I love the fact that Parallels let me use a Mac at work and not feel like a second-class citizen for Windows-only apps, but I hate to say that they seem to have sacrificed performance and usability for eye candy and a rapid release cycle. I think they've lost their lead at this point.
  
  VMWare Fusion also lets me share the Mac's connection to the Internet a little more transparently, so I can VPN in to work from the Mac and the Windows instance rides over the same connection without issue; I could never get this to work from Parallels, which installs a much less transparent network connection (which shows up rather invasively in my Mac's Network preference pane). In Parallels, I had to keep shutting down VPN in the host to use it in the guest, and vice versa. Blech.
  
  I still have a license for Parallels Workstation 2, but have been using VMWare Fusion since the beta and have no intentions to return to Parallels any time soon.
  
  - max

• 21 Sean Corfield // Aug 7, 2007 at 8:15 PM

  Well, all that praise - combined with my experience so far with the evaluation copy - has convinced me. I just dropped my $80 on VMware (and I'm looking forward to the $20 mail-in rebate they're offering at the moment).

• 22 Cliff Meyers // Aug 7, 2007 at 8:18 PM

  Has anyone been able to figure out how to change the boot order in VMware Fusion? I want to boot from a mounted ISO in one of my VMs but I can't figure out how to do this. It was very easy to do in Parallels. It's hard to believe VMware would miss a pretty obvious feature like this.

• 23 Raymond Camden // Aug 7, 2007 at 9:11 PM

  Cliff, you have to hit f2. It took me many tries to get this as it boots very quickly.

• 24 Pierre Lefranc // Aug 7, 2007 at 10:05 PM

  Clif,
  
  How would do you do it on a physical machine? By entering the BIOS setup at boot time.
  
  Same thing in a VMware virtual machine. Reboot the VM, and watch the screen, I think you need to press F2 or Del to enter the (virtual) BIOS setup.

• 25 dave // Aug 8, 2007 at 12:52 AM

  @Bryan
  
  On my original post of this on the HoF list I reported similar findings. Luckily I bought vmware on friday for $40 and it went up on monday.
  
  But the first thing I noticed was that it consumed very little resources which prompted me to do what you did and that was to looky at activity window and it was hands down to vmware and not only that but it lets go af the ram when you close vmware which parallels seems to hold on to it.
  
  
  
  

• 26 Cliff Meyers // Aug 8, 2007 at 5:47 AM

  Thanks guys, F2 worked. I feel a bit sheepish now. :) I will say that the fact Parallels had a GUI option to configure that was a nice bonus feature. Having to hammer away on F2 like a maniac is not good usability.

• 27 Bryan // Aug 8, 2007 at 2:24 PM

  @Pierre, very welcome.
  
  @dave, wish I had seen your post before last Friday. :^)

• 28 Chris // Aug 20, 2007 at 5:50 PM

  Following up on my earlier post...I finally got VMware Fusion installed, and I have to agree with everyone else. It seems to run smoother and their USB support is nice. Unity is a lot better than Coherence. One thing I noticed that I didn't see posted here is VMware is able to automatically recognize my host VPN connection on Mac OS X. Overall, my vote is for VMware.

• 29 JCB // Sep 5, 2007 at 5:38 AM

  I am trying to have the same Windows XP license running either on Boot Camp and under Fusion. On a technical point of view it is working fine. But on the EULA (license) point of view it is a mess. I have to spend my time to re-re- register my windows license. Has anyone found a way ?
  Thanks in advance

• 30 Pierre Lefranc // Sep 5, 2007 at 10:29 PM

  JCB,
  
  If the VMware Tools are installed, they should take care of this for you. If they don't, that is a bug.
  
  They work for me: the first time I ran XP in Fusion, it asked to re-activate, and I obliged. Since then, I have been switching back and forth between XP native and XP in Fusion, and XP does not ask to re-activate anymore.

• 31 NH // Sep 6, 2007 at 6:10 PM

  At my school they have us run Bootcamp to run VMware ace and it uses VMWare player. I would like to avoid the Bootcamp and use VMWare Fusion but I get an error saying its not compatible and I need VMware Fusion? Anyone hear of this issue?

• 32 Joshua // Sep 11, 2007 at 9:30 AM

  You can find bios tips here: http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion/doc/releasenotes_fusion.html
  
  The VMware Fusion BIOS posts too quickly to access.
  Most users will not need to access the BIOS, but advanced users might want to do so, to change the boot order, set a boot password, or enable a second floppy drive. To work around this problem, use a text editor to add the following line to the configuration (.vmx) file of the virtual machine:
  bios.forceSetupOnce = "TRUE"
  The next time you boot up the virtual machine, it will automatically boot into the BIOS. This configuration option then reverts to FALSE. You must set the option to TRUE each time you want to boot the virtual machine into the BIOS.

• 33 Drew Lehman // Nov 17, 2007 at 8:40 AM

  I'm a Gr8 student, want to use my new iMac as a PC and my Dad says VM Fusion Ware is the best on the market now. Is this true and should I buy it with my saved allowance money? I want to play PC based games on my Mac, and do my homework on either the PC or Mac. Is this possible with VM Fusion Ware?

• 34 Sean Corfield // Nov 17, 2007 at 2:32 PM

  @Drew, some games will work fine on VMware but some won't, depending on the version of Windows you use, because of the state of graphics support.

• 35 Russ Johnson // Nov 17, 2007 at 3:04 PM

  I run boot camp on my 24"iMac and my macbook pro. That way I can boot into XP and play any windows games I want. I play Counter-Strike Source, Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty 4 on both of them and they run great.
  
  If you install VMWare Fusion, you can use it to boot the boot camp partition while you are running in os x if you need access to the windows stuff without rebooting. Its the best of both worlds!

• 36 Sean Corfield // Nov 17, 2007 at 3:10 PM

  @Russ, I hadn't thought of the Boot Camp approach! Yes, that would make it possible to run any PC games on the same machine.

• 37 Maxim Porges // Nov 18, 2007 at 6:57 AM

  Dawn of War runs near-flawleesly in VMWare Fusion. Some of the fonts don't render right away in the menus, and the sound is choppy for the first five minutes of gameplay, but not to the point of distraction. It's totally playable.
  
  - max

• 38 Leigh // Nov 26, 2007 at 12:44 AM

  I am considering VMFusion for my Mac/Tiger. I have Windows Vista to load and am wondering if anyone has used these applications with AutoDesk AutoCAD 2006 and/or Adobe PhotoShop using the VM Fusion? Any problems? Suggestions? If necessary I will upgrade to Leopard instead and run them under BootCamp but the reviews are just too good for VMFusion but don't find anyones' experience with these programs I need to run on my Mac. Thanks bunches!

• 39 Darren // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:39 PM

  Hi, Is there any way to make Fusion boot up in Unity made? Also can you set it up to boot instantly after you click on the icon? My wife likes the way Parallels just boots up and enters Coherence without touching anything else. With Fusion she has to select the Virtual Machine, Start it and then enter Unity after it has booted up.
  Thanks.

• 40 André // Feb 7, 2008 at 4:57 PM

  Hi, here's my issue: I'm running ACAD LT 2008 on an MBP/Leopard via Fusion on XP Pro. I am hosting my project files on my host drive, backing up with Time Machine to a networked external drive. I have mapped a network drive to the project folder on my host drive.
  
  Things are sluggish and even freeze momentarily, often. My settings are 3GB RAM (out of 4GB physical), graphics acceleration, two processors. What am I doing wrong?
  
  This seemed like the most specific blog/forum I searched out. Hopefully someone has some input for me.
  
  Thanks in advance!

• 41 Sean Corfield // Feb 7, 2008 at 6:14 PM

  @André, using the host drive via Shared Folders is definitely going to be slower than using the regular VM hard disk.

• 42 Peter Kazanjy // Feb 7, 2008 at 6:31 PM

  Hi all,
  
  Pete Kazanjy, VMware Fusion product marketing lead here. I came across this post and the great comment thread in my travels, and wanted to thank everyone for their interest in Fusion.
  
  Also, in case anyone is interested, we have a vibrant user community located here: www.vmware.com/go/fusionforums
  
  If you have a technical question, it's a great resource, in that we have a lot of smart users that hang out over there, in addition to our engineers who monitor the forums as well.
  
  Best,
  
  Pete

• 43 Sean Corfield // Feb 7, 2008 at 8:29 PM

  @Pete, thanx for dropping by. I've checked out the forums a few times and they are indeed good. The product rocks. I have yet to verify whether the Airport shutdown bug has been fixed in 1.1.1 but was pleased (and surprised) when one of your engineers had contacted me privately because I'd mentioned this problem with 1.0 (and I know it still happened in 1.1 but it is in the release notes for 1.1.1 so we'll see).
  
  Keep up the good work!

• 44 André // Feb 7, 2008 at 8:38 PM

  Thanks Sean,
  Here's the issue with using the VM hard disk, when it's backed up, the files cannot be accessed by PC's on the network. I need the portability of having all my projects on my laptop, but the files need to be backed up, and viewed by others.
  
  Any suggestions?

• 45 Dani // Feb 21, 2008 at 2:20 PM

  How I can use + and - keys in VMWare bios? I tryed it but I couldn't change the boot order

• 46 John Doe // Mar 1, 2008 at 12:22 PM

  Dani,
  
  You are supposed to use the keys "Page Up" and "Page Down" to change the boot order in VMware's BIOS.
  
  I don't know how these keys map to your physical keyboard though.

• 47 Jim McWilliam // Mar 5, 2008 at 9:10 AM

  I was using windows XP with bootcamp and decided to switch to fusion. After three days, I got a message requesting activation of windows XP (previously done through bootcamp). Seems MS recognizes the windows running in fusion as a separate, previously used entity, no longer eligible for activation. Now I am having random difficulties with my system. VMware has been no help other than restating the obvious. MS wants me to pay for advice. Any solutions?

• 48 Derek Styles // Mar 13, 2008 at 6:55 PM

  I personally have had bad luck with Fusion when I was comparing both. Fusion 'beach balled' on me all the time while Parallels was smooth and quick.
  
  Anyone find it interesting that Fusion copied Coherence by adding Unity? Competition is really great isn't it?
  
  Easy choice for me with Parallels.

• 49 Pierre Lefranc // Mar 14, 2008 at 7:14 AM

  Derek,
  
  For me, it was the opposite: Parallels not only beachballed but crashed my Mac machine several times a day.
  
  Also, if you want to tell the copy story, tell it completely:
  1) VMware creates VMware Workstation
  2) Parallels copies it
  3) Parallels adds Coherence, all windows on one plane
  4) VMware copies it with Unity, but allows each window on its own plane, allowing you to interleave Mac apps between Windows apps.
  5) Parallels copies it.
  
  So yes, competition IS great. I don't care if VMware and Parallels copy each other's features, as long as I (the customer) benefit in the end.

• 50 Sean Corfield // Mar 14, 2008 at 8:43 AM

  @Derek, I was going to correct your comment about Coherence / Unity but Pierre beat me to it :)
  
  After running Parallels for a long time, the switch to VMware was an easy choice because it performed much faster and provided much better USB support. I expect the products will keep leapfrogging each other for a while.

• 51 Enjay // Oct 12, 2008 at 5:11 PM

  This response is to those having trouble hitting F2 quickly enough in VMWareFusion... if you go up to the menu Virtual Machine --> Grab Input, before restarting, you should have more luck getting your F2 to register on reboot...

• 52 Michael Kerr // Dec 11, 2008 at 1:26 PM

  I had turned off the floppy device and it made the boot sequence so fast I could not hit F2.
  By having the floppy attached at power on I was again able to hit F2 after a few attempts.
  

• 53 swansnest // Mar 5, 2009 at 9:43 AM

  I have no experience with Parallels, but I do seem to be having an issue with VMWare in that it seems to cause my screen to temporarily black out for a about a second occasionally. The frequency really varies, but it when it does it the machine is in limbo for a couple of seconds after the display comes back, then it seems to recover.
  
  Is anyone else experiencing this??

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