Virtualization Daily

Macworld is running an interesting comparison between VMWare Fusion and Parallels. This is kind of unfair since VMWare Fusion is still in Beta, which they state repeatedly, but it may be useful to help you decide if you should wait for a stable VMWare release or jump on the Parallels bandwagon now.

Running benchmark tests within similarly configured virtual machines under each application reveals dramatic differences in some processor and graphics functions. (Parallels’ scores for graphics performance are almost double those of Fusion.) The most likely cause for these differences is explained in a Fusion alert dialog that informs users that it is running in a debug mode that reduces performance and that can’t be disabled in the current release.

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Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are good products. However, it is clear that Fusion still needs some work in terms of its performance and to fully implement its feature set. It also isn’t quite as stable and reliable as Parallels.

This has been my opinion as well. I’ve tried to use VMWare Fusion off and on and there’s always something that comes up to get in the way. I’m sure it will be a great product when it’s done, but this current beta is tough to feel good about. In contrast, Parallels has a very good product, and it does the job well on the Mac. To me it’s unfortunate that VMWare didn’t port the full Workstation product to the Mac. It’s features like snapshots that really set it apart from Parallels, and that is simply missing from Fusion. So here’s to hoping those features eventually find their way into VMWare’s Mac products.