VMware or Parallels Desktop?

[PandaBear]

We do that at work a lot, and we found the performance of Parallel Desktop to be better than VMWare (and cheaper too).

I tried Virtual Box and end up with a lot of compatibility issue. If you can afford Parallel, get it.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: DuckRyder

It seems like it might be possible to use the same installation, but I don't know if it is still possible to configure the integration "like a MAC"?


You can use the same installation, but I heard coworker complains that Windows see the hardware difference (some stupid network card address differences) and thinks that you use it on 2 different machines. Not a big deal.

 

[javacontour]

I second this. I have an 8GB Quad Core PC and run Windows, Solaris, Linux, and any other trial X86 OS I want in a Virtual Box.

It's also nice to clone a system before upgrades or other major changes. If things get sideways, I simply revert back to the original and delete the file that represents the disk image of the failed upgrade.

If all is well, I can delete the original, preserving disk space on the host system.

I run it at home on my PC with Win7 as the host. I run it on my work laptop with Solaris 11 as the Host OS.

No drama with either.

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/overview/index.html

This is how I run windoze XP on my linux desktop; I use windoze really only to access my company websites and of course the microsoft patch page.

The entire Windows install on my linux box is just 1 file, making it easy to backup or recover from inevitable windows problems.

edit:keep in mind a lot of memory is helpful if you choose to run virtualbox; 8gb is probably a minimum for practical use.

 

[javacontour]

PS, I have XP Pro and Win7 Pro virutal boxes for my employer's VPN. It's nice to have VPN access inside the virtualized environment, but the host OS is on the outside.

Since I can share folders, no need for large disks for the guest OS. I can just drop any files into the shared folders as needed. So the Host OS looks like a file server to each guest.

 

[mpersell]

The competition is so active between Parallels and VMWare Fusion that I don't think you can go wrong with either of them.