SuperSite Blog

Pingback from  VMware Fusion for $40 |  Smoking

Slight correction - Parallels 3.0 is $59.99 at Amazon, though your point obviously still stands.

Pingback from  Airline Travel » VMware Fusion for $40

Pingback from  Smoking » VMware Fusion for $40

Both offer similar performance, but Parallels is a little less hungry on resources I think.

Here is a great shootout of the 2 products, vs Boot camp and a regular PC running XP and Vista:

www.mactech.com/.../VirtualizationBenchmark

The interesting point right here:

Clearly, most people are still using XP, and not Vista. And clearly, Vista doesn't perform anywhere near as fast as XP on the same hardware. But, Vista is ultimately the future for Windows, and over time will gain greater acceptance, and therefore is something that we want to keep an eye on.

Using our Boot Camp configuration as a means for comparison, we found Vista ran 17-30% slower than the equivalent XP setup.

By comparison, when we compared XP configurations against the baseline PC, we got these results:

   * XP under Boot Camp averaged 12% faster than the baseline PC running XP

   * XP under VMware Fusion averaged 1% faster than the baseline PC running XP

   * XP under Parallels averaged 19% faster than the baseline PC running XP

There are three ways to look at how Vista performed in comparison to XP. The first way is to compare VMware Fusion and Parallels to Boot Camp. And the second way, is to compare Vista for each virtual machine compared to the XP performance for that same virtual machine. The third way is to look at the complex task tests which have to do mostly with the user interface of the virtualization environments.

When we compare VMware Fusion and Parallels running Vista to the same model of computer running Vista under Boot Camp, here are the averages that we got:

   * Vista under VMware Fusion averaged 46% slower than Vista under Boot Camp

   * Vista under VMware Fusion is 44% faster than Vista under Parallels

   * Vista under Parallels averaged 110% slower than Vista under Boot Camp

When we compare each of the environments running Vista to the same environment running XP, here are the averages that we got:

   * Vista under Boot Camp averaged 24% slower than XP

   * Vista under VMware Fusion averaged 32% slower than XP

   * Vista under Parallels averaged 85% slower than XP

It's a completely different story when we look at VMware Fusion and Parallels running Vista for the multi-step task tests. Since these tests focus on user interface focusing on the integration of Windows and Mac OS X applications, it's primarily focused on the steps the human has to take, not raw processing. Here, Parallels is consistently 5x faster than VMware Fusion when looking at cross platform task tests in Vista...

daveinla ... Thanks for the comprehensive post. I spelled out XP as the default option there because it performs dramatically better in virtual machines than does Vista. (I actually do use Vista, regardless, but that's mostly because of my specific needs. If I just wanted to run certain Windows applications, XP would be a better choice in this case.)

thanks,

Paul

I know that Vista is very fast using Bootcamp on a 3GHz quad Pro Tower. I guess it may seem slower on those less powerful iMac and MacBooks. I have no comparison with XP, but do not believe that I could notice and speed difference on a Pro Tower, since Vista is so fast. I do note, as stated by myself previously and on the web, that  the Pro Towers top end at 2 GBs of RAM with Vista and XP, but the MacBooks will see 3 GB, or at least many of them will see it as reported on the the web. I have 4GB but Vista can only see 2GB. Google [and Apple] was unable to find a solution.

I have used both and Fusion is hands down better.  Unity BLOWS away coherence.  Unity is fast and stable cohrence is buuuuugggy.

Parrallels does have a nice home folder syncing feature, that can be setup with Fusion folder sharing and something like synctoy.

If you do VM's for a living as in work on it in a corporate world, then there is simply no comparison.  A fusion VM can run on VMware Server and VMware ESX server.  Build out a Fusion VM of say Windows 2008 just the way you like it and then drop it on a ESX server for some production testing:)

Pingback from  Apple » Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40

Pingback from  Smoking » VMware Fusion for $40 | Smoking

Pingback from  Smoking » Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40

Pingback from  Smoking » Apple ?? Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40

"Combine Fusion with an OEM version of Windows XP Home ($90) or Pro ($140) or various OEM versions of Vista ($90 to $169), and you've got a fairly inexpensive solution for running Windows and Mac apps side-by-side."

Except that it's not legal to buy an OEM System Builder copy unless you a) a system builder, and b) it's for resale on a new computer system.

Are you going to tell Mackie users to download illegal codecs for playing various media files on Windows from Free-Codecs.com again, too?

Do any of these programs support some sort of VM add-in similar to how Virtual PC and Virtual Server on Windows supports "VM Additions" to dramatically improve performance in the guest OS?  Hyper-V has a similar mechanism, which also improves the connections between the hypervisor, the guest OS, and the hardware VT functionality of the system, among other functions.

Anybody using Virtual PC 2007 with VM Additions in Windows Vista will tell you it runs FAR faster than without them, and the hardware VT support in Virtual PC doesn't do nearly enough by comparison.  On a hardware VT-supported system with VM Additions installed in the guest OS, I would peg the performance somewhere close to full performance, but closer to the equivalent performance of a few steps down in CPU speed.  For legacy apps, the performance is still pretty good though, and it's a configuration I recommend for many clients that need support for sandboxed apps (or legacy apps under a legacy OS such as XP).  Considering that it's free, it's the best value for those that don't need complicated virtual hardware support that VMware and others include.

I also use it for deployment testing myself, primarily because it's fast to deploy OS configurations using the ISO image loader.  I have been known to create a little virtualized network with Windows Server 2003 with WDS and RRAS installed on one Virtual PC machine, deploying to another PXE-booting virtual machine, all locally on my notebook with 4GB of RAM running Windows Vista x64 though.  Good times!

Pingback from  Smoking » Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40 | Smoking

Pingback from  Smoking » Smoking ?? Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40

Pingback from  Smoking » Smoking ?? Apple ?? Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40

Pingback from  Smoking » Smoking ?? Smoking ?? Smoking ?? VMware Fusion for $40