Comments on: Parallels Desktop 5 Released, Stays Ahead of VMWare

By: Q dub

Q dub — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:07:29 +0000

I’ve bounced back and forth between Parallels 5 and Fusion 3 in the past couple months. Verdict is: P5 consumes more resources, and in return delivers substantially better performance. Apps load more quickly, and more importantly, when in windowed or full-screen mode, overall responsiveness feels 100% native. If you can afford a mac, you can afford a RAM upgrade to 8GB, and its well worth it. Gaming is still mostly a non-starter, but that’s why I use the same bootcamp partition for both direct booting + virtualization.

By: shaun2k

shaun2k — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:02:55 +0000

ps. Forgot to mention for wake on demand you need a device acting as a sleep proxy such as the new gen time capsule, it MAY work without one but I have not tried.

By: shaun2k

shaun2k — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:01:39 +0000

I haven’t used Fusion 3 yet but am actually so happy with Parallels 5 that I don’t even think I will bother with Fusion 3.

Everyone says, well, Parallels uses more CPU and chews up a whole lot of RAM as if it’s a bad thing, I have a Core i7 iMac with 8GB RAM and I know I sure as hell didn’t buy a system like that to let it all go unused. Why does everyone want faster processors that are utilised less. Having said all that, I have run it flat out for days and days, and I have not noticed one little bit of slowdown with the mac, or indeed with parallels. I say use more CPU and use more RAM because clearly in reality that’s adding up to better performance of the parallels product. And any hippies who are going to whinge about the extra power consumption when utilising more RAM and CPU, I have wake on demand setup in snow leopard so when I remotely access my home system from work in either snow leopard or Win 7 under parallels, my system wakes from sleep on demand, I do what I need to do and then it goes back to sleep again. It wouldnt use much power at all over any given day. Simply awesome. I’d prefer that than a product which does not fully utilise my hardware.

By: Charles Everwood

Charles Everwood — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:57:14 +0000

I have Fusion 2.0.6 and found out that there’s no way too resize the disk, even after deleting all snapshots. The complimentary support runs out after 30 days so I’m screwed. I’m going back to Parallels.

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Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:49:17 +0000

[...] than fusion VMWare Fusion vs. Parallels Desktop for Mac: Which Is Faster? – Parallels – Gizmodo Parallels Desktop 5 Released, Stays Ahead of VMWare But there is Bootcamp to consider… Apple – Support – Discussions – VMWare Fusion vs Parallels vs [...]

By: jeffrey

jeffrey — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:21:53 +0000

I have been using both.. going back and forth… trying to determine the best one for me. I am a .net developer and I am forever in Visual Studio. Parallels 5 was a little faster.. of that there is no doubt. However, when i was typing code into vs, weird keystrokes would happen… im using win7 ultimate. The windows mobility center would pop up.. not to mention the screen would lock if i hit the letter L. This is annoying to say the least… I type very fast, and there are 3 windows that will pop up if you hit their letters.. this is an intermittent issue.. i would have to press option-command to allow myself to type x,l, or s again….Fusion does not do this. I also noticed that my battery wouldnt last very long when i had parallels up and running… parallels was sucking up all the resources… I also am a multi clutch and jitouch user… i cant bring those gestures over in parallels… but i have them set up and working very nicely with fusion. My battery lasts longer and my cpu isnt always full tilt with fusion. (islayer has a nice tool to see how much resources you are using at all times – istat menus)

I purchased both.. and I have transferred the machine over and thoroughly used both products.

I choose VM Fusion… It works fast enough.. and its more stable in my opinion. The speed is nice but when you lose stability.. its not really worth it.

By: Marc Draco

Marc Draco — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:33:48 +0000

Two words LuDina – Boot Camp.

Don’t use Parallels or VMware – if you need to access specialist hardware neither of these systems are up to much.

Either way, you’re going to need a legitimate copy of XP (Vista is a disaster and Win 7 doesn’t support XP programs well).

Parallels and VMWare are great solutions on the face of it, but in many respects they’re a band-aid. Boot camp turns your Mac (temporarily) into a full-spec PC without all the pain.

By: LuDina

LuDina — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 06:40:36 +0000

I’m a MacBook Pro user, however, I have 2 or 3 pc programs that are on my husband’s pc that I would like to use on my mac. They are quilting programs that are not available for macs so I had to install them on the pc. My question is…can I put/use only those quilting programs on the vm or p5 or do I have to put ALL his pc stuff on my mac?

By: Lee Davis

Lee Davis — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:43:23 +0000

Ok guy’s I have a question. I was running V3 and had no problems other than it slowed up after a while so I went to P5. I’m very happy with P5 and agree that the performance is greater than P3. The only issues I have since installing P5 after doing a clean reinstall on my IMac my initial boot up instead of being 15 sec it takes my mac 45 to 60 sec.

Anyone have a thought other than so what if it takes longer for the computer to boot?

Happy New Years

Lee

By: Marc Draco

Marc Draco — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:39:08 +0000

I think I’ll wait until P6 (or until they get P5 working a bit better).

I started with P2 and it was fairly sturdy – things have gotten worse, not better since then. They seem to think (wrongly) that users want ever-more eye-candy when what we actually want is a system that’s stable 6-Sigma of the time.

By: Matthew Bookspan

Matthew Bookspan — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:54:34 +0000

Untrue. None of the Parallels 5 code is 64bit: http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=95790

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:07:04 +0000

I don’t use Windows for anything other than some programs my school requires Windows for, but the one thing that drove me crazy on Parallels was that it and OS X were constantly battling for USB devices. If I plugged in my iPod or my Blackberry while running Parallels, it would pop up on Parallels then disconnect and pop up on OS X, and then disconnect and pop up again on Parallels, and then disconnect again; in an endless cycle, even when I would designate who I wanted to have control over. Fusion never gave me that issue.

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:37:21 +0000

Would love to believe these P5 enthousiasts, however, just installed clean Bootcamp Win XP Pro SP3 on brand new iMac 27′ Quad i5.

Bootcamp standalone works fine, Fusion 3 trial works fine, P5 hangs during ‘virtual machine is being configured’ step 1/4. Even had “BLue Screen of Death” since I reinstalled P5 after successful install.

Can’t even get support as I do not have support code for trial. My old P3 ran OK on MBPro, but doubt i will be upgrading – seems P5 are just not stable/robust but just rushed it out of door to react to new F3.

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:28:13 +0000

Is there anywhere I can view a list of programs parallels 5 supports? Also how does it handle games, im not a massive gamer but there are a few i’d like to be able to play now i’ve made the switch to a mac.

By: bob

bob — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:47:56 +0000

This Ars Technica review (i linked to the conclusion) says it all. I’ve had almost all versions of Fusion and Parallels since they came out and I agree with their conclusion. I experienced most of what they claim only they state it much better than I ever could.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/11/parallels-desktop-5-review.ars/7

By: Gary

Gary — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:34:55 +0000

I am getting “error code 2″ when I attempt to install Quicken 2008 into Windows 7 through Parallel 5.0.