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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
Better than Virtual PC IMO
I have used older versions of Virtual PC and have found it lacking. So much so that I would never buy an upgraded version. So my comparison to VPC is dated. I will say that I have a very tech savvy friend who currently uses both Parallels and VMware Fusion 2 and he prefers the VMWare product by a small margin. This is a very stable platform that is a no brainer if you already own a copy of Windows. If you want an ultra cheap option you may want to try Wine. Google Wine for Mac and you will find it. It is simply a program that allows you to run many Windows programs without having Windows installed. When running a Windows app, it looks and feels like you are using a PC. Obviously there are some limitations, but for that price ($39) you may be able to live with it. They have many supported programs that have been fully tested and others that aren't supported, but still may work. I had one program that wasn't supported, but it runs beautifully anyway. However, if you want full featured PC results, you will need to get VMware Fusion 2. It is truly a great program.
Rating: 
-
Wait for 2.1...
Obviously, there are a lot of people who are happy with 2.0. Perhaps I would have been too if it was the first version of VMware I had installed, but as an upgrade it has been a disaster.
I had used VMware 1.x on my Mac Pro since May, and loved it. I have two VMs; an XP Pro VM that is a clone of my old Dell desktop, and a Vista Ultimate VM that was made from a clean install in Boot Camp. VMware isn't as "feature rich" as Parallels, but it seemed to be faster and more stable.
Then, that fateful day arrived when I was offered a free upgrade to 2.0. The upgrade has proven to be worth even less than I paid for it. One look at the VMware forums will show you that I am not alone.
My biggest problem was with my XP VM. I could not restart the VM without getting a BSOD. The only way to get it to restart was to shut down the VM and then shut down VMware. And then, the thing would give a BSOD nearly half the time. Once it was running, the cursor was very sluggish, and once the VM window had control of it, it didn't want to let go.
My Vista VM faired somewhat better. It didn't crash, but the curser didn't work correctly. As in the XP VM, it was incredibly sluggish, and the VM didn't want to let it go.
I've spent about two weeks now trying to resolve these problems with VMware support. I've tried totally wiping the installation from both the Mac and VM, but that didn't help. I installed two different releases of 2.0.1, and neither made a difference. Today, I "upgraded" to 1.3.3, and things are working again. I'll wait for 2.1 before I "upgrade" again, and if they don't offer me a free upgrade, I'll upgrade to Parallels.
Rating: -
Ripoff. Save your money.
I am a previous owner of Parallels 3.0, but I wanted to run some of the new games that Parallels 3.0 didn't support. So I purchased VMware 2.0 about a month ago, not knowing when the new version of Parallels would be available. Ugh! Needless to say, I should definitely have waited. I found VMware 2.0 to be buggy beyond belief and actually slower than the Parallels 3.0 I had installed at my office. Worse yet, it was confusing to use and yielded unexpected results at every turn - things that you would never see running Windows on a PC. A complete waste of money!
Now I've got Parallels 4.0, and I love it. It's faster than most PCs running Windows and screams by comparison to its predecessor. And, most importantly, it works beautifully with the games I've been waiting to use.
Not sure how many other people have tried both VMware and Parallels and had this same experience, but I thought my experience might be useful to people considering VMware.
Rating: -
Windows Under Glass
Overview:
App Performance: A+
VM states suspend and resume seamlessly and quickly.
Windows Performance:A+
The windows users in my office are using fairly new PCs and laptops, but with crappy graphics cards. My Macbook Pro (early 2007 version) runs windows "faster" than any version of windows in the office. Is it really faster? There's no way to know without running benchmarks, but it seems faster, and that's something.
Interface: A -
Accessibility to Windows and Windows apps is simple, as are installation and configuration utilities. Windows apps are still bound to a single screen when using spaces - even in 'unity' mode. This is a major gripe I have with VMs in general, as I use multiple work spaces. For those who use a single screen, or who run the VM in a dedicate screen 'space', this isn't a problem. It keeps me out of 'unity' mode and in full screen though.
Mac/PC sharing: A
Your home folder on your Mac shows up as an attached drive (Z:), making navigation to mac directories and files simple and easy (and fast!)
Networking: A+
Fast networking, with setup so easy I almost forgot to review it :-)
Overall: A+
Details:
I'm a long-time Windows-on-Mac user, starting back in the day of Virtual PC, and most recently using Parallels (I currently use Parallels v3.0). I want to start this review by saying that, for many casual PC users looking to run Windows on a Mac, there probably isn't a need -- most everything I do day to day (at work and home) can be done on either OS, and if you own mac hardware, you'll be happier running Mac apps as well. UNLESS you have that "one application" that isn't supported natively.
In my office, we:
1. use Microsoft exchange for email and scheduling, and so I needed to run Windows
2. use one of those large printer/copier/scanner/collating/faxing monstrosities, and it lacks a working mac driver
Of course, there's a slew of word and powerpoint files to deal with as well, but these can be handled with Office for Mac or OpenOffice. Of course, once running Windows anyway for the two reasons above, I prefer to use native Office apps, because that way I'm 100% the files will be compatible (and plus, I end up having to open them on the Windows side to print them anyway).
My initial impressions of VMware Fusion 2 were very positive. It was easy to install, and the interface is very clean. While it's not 100% fair to compare VMware Fusion 2 to the older version of Parallels 3.0 in terms of performance, it is fair to compare things like interface and usability -- and in these areas, VMware wins, in my opinion. I'll give the blanket caveat up front: Parallels may have fixed some of these things in newer versions ... I'll try to get a copy of Parallels v4.0 and do a follow-up review.
VMware's 'unity' puts windows apps side by side with Mac apps (much like Parallel's 'Coherence'). When in 'unity' mode, you have the option to show the windows task bar, which plunks the ugly windows bar behind the Mac's dock. My dock fills the center 70% of my screen, so the Start Menu and the goofy windows tool tray are nice and visible on the far-left and far-right of the screen. However, because I use virtual screens (Mac's "spaces" feature), and because VMware is bound to one of those screens, I run in full-screen mode -- if I have to switch spaces to get to my PC apps anyway, I don't want the ugly conflict between taskbar & dock.
Networking was so clean I almost forgot to include it in this review: it just worked, piggy-backing my Mac's network connections without requiring any action on my part. Digging in, it offers direct network connections as well as private networking (the PC is only available to the Mac). Nice options, but what's even nicer is I didn't even notice they were there.
Performance is amazing for a VM ... even before enabling access to both processors and boosting the default 512MB of memory to 1GB. The only slow-down on the Mac side occurs during a windows boot (or re-boot as is more often the case) ... otherwise, Windows can sit, used or ignored, running on the mac without any noticeable performance degradation to Mac apps.
Rating: -
Very solid PC emulator for the Mac
When Mac introduced Intel chips they opened the door to finally be able to run PC software on the Mac. I rushed out and bought Parallels. When Parallels was the only game in town it was great. Sure Parallels crashed sometimes, and would often lose its internet connection. But it was great to be able to run PC's.
Now you have an established visualization leader, VMWare in the game. I've rarely seen VMWare crash or drop its internet connection. You're still not going to run 3d windows games at full power/extreme performance. But for everything short of video games, this product does quite well.
VMWare lets me use hardware that just does not support my Mac. I can plug in my TomTom, programmable remote control, Lego Mindstorms and other USB devices that do not have Mac programs. Or in the case of Mindstorms, do not have a very good Mac program!
If you want the best of both worlds, this is a great product!
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