Katie MarsalThe technology magazine notes in its benchmark tests that the older Windows XP operating system runs considerably faster than Vista regardless of the environment, but also that the relative speed of each OS inside a virtual machine can vary widely.
Using a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro tower as its comparison systems, MacTech finds that Parallels Desktop is generally faster than VMware Fusion in common networking and office tasks when using Windows XP. When switching to Vista, however, Fusion handles the performance hit more gracefully and drops by an average of 32 percent across the three systems versus a steeper 85 percent for Parallels.
Surprisingly, either can be slightly faster than running Windows through the native Boot Camp mode for some of these particular tasks, the publication says. Parallels earns additional recommendations for those who depend on a tight link between Mac OS X and Windows, though VMware's solution may be better for Windows software that depends on multiple cores.
Both have a good selection of virtual appliances and are easy enough to use that selecting a solution can be just a matter of opinion, according to the comparison.
Nonetheless, users who don't need the tie-in between the two operating systems are still better-served by running Windows in Boot Camp, MacTech tells readers. And when compared to a reference Fujitsu notebook running a 1.86GHz Core Duo, even the base MacBook was typically faster, making it more feasible to run Windows directly from the Mac itself.
"It's faster than a PC anyway," MacTech says.
Complete test results, comparison graphs, and further analysis are available at the MacTech site.
Malcolm Owen
Christine McKee
Amber Neely
16 Comments
My friend was trying out the latest (official) vmware fusion release yesterday. Overall it seems for winxp2pro, Parallels has a slight edge in snaptasticness™ w00t first post ! ... Leopard and 2gb RAM, Parallels Build 5580+ seems quite decent. Looks like the Parallels team were reasonably well prepared for Leopard.
Thank god we have both. Without VMWare's competition Parallels wouldn't be where it is today. Anyone know if they (Parallels) still suck in the support department? I haven't had to call upon support yet because my Parallels install just works as supposed.
I'm using Parallels on the Mac on and off, at the moment I'm beta testing Windows software (highly specialized environmental monitoring database) and actually I'm glad I don't have to test it on my work XP boxen. At work I'm running virtual Linuxes under VMWare which is also a rather painless experience. Can't really comment on VMWare under Mac OS.
All that I still would really like from either of these products is Mac OS virtualization. I don't say I can't live without that but it would be a big nice-to-have!
Oh, and one little fact that can't be too well known (I'm quoting the report):
- 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
Anyways, I'm not touching that resource hog of an operating system with a six foot pole. One more reason to phaze out Windows from any working environment.
First, I'm running Vista Ultimate under Boot Camp and it runs fast. Secondly, Windows isn't going to be phased out anytime in the forseeable future. Companies simply have to much invested in it from developed applications (Visual Studio), Win servers, Win Clients and Thin Clients. I like both Vista and Mac OS X. They both have their niche.
I made a couple of videos for one of parallels promotional contests on the topic of "why choose?"
check em out and let me know what you think
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EBlYb-PY_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7qxs-YHaGc