Parallels 3.0 has just been released. Parallels is about to get more competition, however. Virtualization specialist VMWare, which has been testing its own Fusion product for the Mac, plans to release a fourth beta on Friday, with a goal of releasing the product later this summer. Video of Fusion here.
Parallels 3.0 Released; VMWare Fusion Video
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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VMware’s Beta 4 went live already.
Official announcement:
http://www.vmware.com/community/ann.jspa?annID=350
Link to download:
http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/
Nice videos showing Parallels features are here
http://parallelsvirtualization.blogspot.com/2007/06/demo-videos.htm…
I’ve been testing out Parallels 3 today, mainly the 3D Acceleration.
I’ve got to say, its no where near what their video shows, I tried Soldat, which for people who know it, is a pretty low end game, only DX8.1
And it ran like a dog would of been 5fps, unplayable.
VMWare Fusion is going to be interesting with the ability to pop out windows too.
SmartSelect in Parallels 3 is pretty good.
Enabling DirectX Support under the Video settings of a Virtual Machine might help
I haven’t read the manual, but im guessing this isn’t enabled by default on all virtual machines, it’s something you have to switch on
I’ve been testing Parallels now and I haven’t tried out all the features, but the ability to open up documents in the windows vm with mac apps is looking very nice, plus the snapshot manager will save me some time.
Only advantage VMWare has as far as I can see is 64 bit support and when you use expose every windows app appears as it’s own window instead of having the windows vm with a transparent background. I’d like to have that but not worth $200 for, at that price I can still afford another parallels upgrade before I reach vmwares price for a single license.
I think this may come down to a tool used in business (VMware) vs. what people use at home (Paralells). VMware is going to (or at least *should*) have the advantage that you can move the VM to other VMware products, like Server, running on Windows or Linux, or ESX. It’s a pretty neat idea to be able to take a ‘server’ home with me.
Home users are probably going to pick whatever costs less. They’re not worried about moving VMs or (to a large degree) Linux support. From the sounds of it, that means Paralells.
The new Parallels 3 is supposed to have Linux tools for seemless integration, I haven’t yet tried this so I don’t know how well it works yet.
How do you know fusion is $200 That is a very misleading comment seeing as they have not even announced the pricing of it yet. Post a link if you do happen to know for sure Fusion is going to be that much. I really doubt VMware will price themselves out of the market like that. That would make no sense at all.
I’m really leaning towards giving Parallels a little extra leeway.
They had a product on the market when I needed it. VMWare is still working at getting a shipping product. Even if VMWare is a bit better, I’ll stick w/ Parallels, because they had a solution out there that worked great when I needed it.
-Kelson
windows 95 worked decent at the time when i needed it. and then OSX came out (years later) i sure as hell didn’t stay with windows 95 just cuz it was there when i needed an OS.
also the typewriter was faily eficient in its day…
(and so on and so froth. something about compairing a lap top to an etch a sketch comes ot mind).
Edited 2007-06-08 05:32
Look at Parallels publicity site. Serach for “media highlights” you will see several reports of articles, all dated in the future…as far as July 2007.
Parallels has never been so good.
That’s because they are links to web versions of magazine articles, dated by the edition of the magazine they (will) appear in.
Doesn’t anyone find that at all shady?
Anything like the VMWare product for Linux? I am an avid windows user, but I think I may buy a Mac next time, because I will be able to use my beloved Visual Studio .NET with out having to have it in a tiny window.
Not being an “avid” Windows user, I did just that, because I work with VS2005 for a living
That vid on youtube is pretty impressive, I think I’ll fire that link off to a few of our “I’d get a Mac, but for the lack of ACT/SimplyAccount/etc” support clients.
Too bad about the awful, awful music though – seems to be the “Worst of the 90s” dance mix.
I start to have the impression that applications will be available independently of their originating platform. Linux on windows can be pre-packaged, windows on osx is available …
I can’t say that I know what will be the end result.
roel
“Doesn’t anyone find that at all shady?”
Absolutely not at all. It’s pretty apparent that you don’t know the way that physical publishing works.
You create your article and submit it. It could take a month OR MORE before it gets into a magazine. The way they are dating it is a note so that people who want to find the article know which issue to look for. Nothing shady about that at all. Actually it is very helpful.
Actually I don’t know how publishing works. But it IMO it does not look good for them. After seeing what they have been doing with their advertising (overpromise/underdeliver) I am not too happy with the way they do things.
Their software (which I own) happens to be pretty buggy. I am holding out for Fusion at this point. Even in beta it is proving more stable that what parallels has released.
Working 10 hours/day with PAralells under Tiger and two VMs (both XP Pro), I find your “pretty buggy” statement quite strange.
I work with Visual Studio 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 (one XP for each). I haven’t found Paralells 3088 unstable at ALL. And I am compiling code, connecting to a SQL Server database all the time, etc.
Our project is a big solution (19 C# projects) + a few Legacy VB.NET stuff and I do my work perfectly. I have a Macbook Pro (2gb RAM)
I copy and paste, move files, etc., all the time between the guest/host OSs. I rarely if never run both VMs at the same time (because of the RAM). I even ran World of Warcraft while having Paralells runing and it worked flawlesly. I was so impressed that I made a video of it.
I had like 20/25 FPSs under WOW (1440×900!)
Seriously, Paraells is far from perfect, but it really works. I do not use BootCamp for the simple reason that I do not trust Windows Stability. I rather have a VM File that I can backup every night.
I would like to know that answer too. I’m guessing though that he is basing this on the price of VMWare for Windows which costs $180.
All i know is I swore I read something directly from VMWare when they started the Mac betas that said the whole thing would cost $200. Idk I could be mistaken, in any case the $190 price for the windows workstation doesn’t give me much hope.
In any case VMWare is more expensive than Parallels. Judging them by both of their software products though they look very comparable.
Im just saying unless you really need 64-bit support (which isn’t most people) you don’t really need VMWare, and Parallels is cheaper anyway for pretty much the same thing.
VMWare will prince competitively with Parallels. From a marketing stand point it only makes sence. When you compete with a product that already has a following and a large user base and you have none for that platform you need to do at least 1 of a few things.
1 have better features, having the same features better wont always work.
2 under cut their price to atract users to your product on a cost basis.
3 better marketing, idaly completely aclipse all there adds
4 and this is the most iportant. have your product endorsed be Jesus. Thats right. having teh figure head of one of the wolds most popular religions endorsing your product is a must have. I mean what other product can boast that if you are having an issue with the software just pray that it gets resolved, and BAM, works like a charm.
(sorry for the rambol, its been a slow day at the office. )
I think you are mistaken about seeing the price on their site.
I’m currently running beta4 of Fusion and Parallels 3.0.
Unity is terrific and much more useful for integrating Windows apps into OS X as first class applications.
Fusion also appears to run better on my hardware.
Fusion appears to install fewer files in the system and provides a complete uninstaller.
Switching between fullscreen OSX and Windows machines is a little nicer with Parallels, but with Unity I don’t expect I’ll need this anyways.
Since both have free trials everyone can try and determine themselves.
Edited 2007-06-08 20:13
parallels listens to customers and implements what we want. vmware doesn’t appear to.
Can you sight specifics as statements like that are so subjective and don’t really say anything.
Considering Fusion appears to have all the same functionality as Parallels how can that be true?
(And don’t say 3D since vmware products started implementing experimental 3D before Parallels even made an announcement about 3D.)
Edited 2007-06-09 13:18
After using Parallels since its first release, I wasn’t much of a fan of their Dock integration. It just didn’t feel right, or Mac like. I always felt I was using a sub-ordinate operating system and it’s application integration felt klunky. However, version 3.0 has impressed me. The integration is smoother than ever. The Dock’s application icons for Windows is truly first class, and it almost seems natural to leave the virtual machine’s Windows running in the background just so my copy of Microsoft Office 2003 (for Windows) naturally opens up without delay when I double-click on a *.DOC or *.XLS file. Well-done! The upgrade was well-worth the price. Parallels has remained a stable platform for running Windows software on a Macintosh without the reboot.
A share that parallels can’t run on 64bit linux, I would love to use it.