Save a Bunch on VMWare Fusion

[Vincent Ferrari]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://vmware.com/vmwarestore/' target='_blank'>http://vmware.com/vmwarestore/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"As a Mac owner, I've been relatively happy with Parallels Desktop which lets me run Windows or Linux builds within Mac OS X. It's seamless and transparent, thanks to the Coherence function that allows Windows apps to appear as if they're Mac apps on my desktop. Now that I have a shiny and peppy new MacBook thanks to a pre-Black Friday deal, I might use some of the savings for VMware Fusion."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1228159973.usr18053.jpg" width="450" height="426" /></p><p>If you've ever wanted to dabble in VMWare Fusion, now is definitely the time.&nbsp; Kevin at JK On The Run even found a way to bring the price down even more by using their crossgrade discount so if you're a Parallels Desktop owner, now is <strong>really</strong> the time to give VMWare a try if you were thinking about it before.&nbsp; I don't personally have a preference.&nbsp; On the rare occasions where I have a need for Windows, I use Parallels but I could just as easily see myself using VMWare Fusion, particularly at this price.&nbsp; The deal expires today though, so act now if you want it.</p>

[doogald]

I've heard so many bad things about Parallels 4 that I went ahead and did just this today - a competitive upgrade to Fusion. I used VMWare all of the time when I was using Windows, and the only reason I went with Parallels a couple of years ago was that they were the only ones there.

[Pete Paxton]

I've been using VM Ware for quite some time now. Great program for running Windows. I've been able to run pretty much anything except games. Fairly quick too. My wife is able to run the desktop remote to login at work. For the price I think it's a bargain.

[TopDog]

I might be bias since I'm a long time professional VMware Server/Workstation user, but from the small testing I've done with Parallels, I find VMware Fusion much more intuitive and easy to configure.

I use my personal MacBook at work, with VMware Fusion running XP, and it works great. There is one other Mac user at work, and he is running Parallels. He has had several network related issues that I've not had with VMware.

[doogald]

As I said, I used Parallels ver 2 and ver 3 for a couple of years, and it worked great for me. I never had any issues with it at all, networking or otherwise, and installing Windows in Parallels was so incredibly easy compared with installing Windows to a non-VM environment that it was great to watch it work.

I did make the switch to Fusion, and I finally got everything working, but it was a bit of a pain. Eventually I realized that I needed to uninstall Parallels Tools within Parallels and then remove the display driver before it would successfully reconfigure in Fusion. There is definitely a great lack of instruction and direction from VMWare on best practices of importing VMs from Parallels and VirtualPC. I still have not installed an image from scratch, so I don't yet know how Fusion compares with Parallels.

I think that both solutions are great and, unless you are doing heavy graphics processing, it is a much better way to work than Boot Camp.