VMWare I would say that VMWare is better than Parallels, not only because it's much much cheaper compared to Parallels $80 charging fee but because it can be run on a variety of different computers and not just Apple Mac Computers. Although, you can't run some windows apps in VMWare with retina support but that's only for those that have retina ready screens and that's something the world is still catching up to! Plus you can use more RAM in VMWare as opposed to using Parallels and that is one of the most important things when it comes to this kind of thing as these days, some apps are very resource hungry and without much RAM it kind of defeats the whole purpose of using one of these in the first place. So I would say VMWare is better for these reasons but only if you really need them as there are other alternatives out there today and some of them are better as well (minus the heft price tag!). VMware VMWare Workstation has versions for Windows and Linux, and on the Mac the VMWare solution is called Fusion.
![Which Is Better Parallels Or Vmware For Mac Which Is Better Parallels Or Vmware For Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125509772/644919471.jpg)
Parallels Desktop is available as a subscription, which means that users will always get the latest software and features, but the license is on a per computer basis. The lifetime license option is priced higher at $99.99. VMware Fusion’s pricing strategy is a bit different, just like its feature set.
VirtualBox wins in this respect, because it supports a much wider variety of platforms. The program is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris, both for 32 and 64 bits. The only complication for a novice user in these tools is the very complexity of each one in relation to the concepts and resources made available, which is a direct consequence of such options.
In this item, VMWare Workstation for being a more professional tool, is by far the most complex. Version 9 of VMWare Workstation brings a number of new features to the product and putting them all in one place runs the risk of making the program irresistible. The most visible of these new features is support for Windows 8 and USB 3.0; enhanced graphics drivers, which include OpenGL support for Linux clients; nested virtualization; and a series of remote control and VM management enhancements.
An exhaustive set of benchmarks comparing, and to run Windows on a Mac. To tackle this problem, MacTech undertook a huge benchmarking project starting in September. The goal was to see how Boot Camp, VMware Fusion, and Parallels performed on different levels of Mac hardware, covering both Windows XP and Vista, and comparing that to a baseline PC running Windows. Doing such an exhaustive comparison resulted in 19 configurations tested with over 2500 tests to be completed. They tested 3 different broad scenarios: one step tests, multi-step tasks between Mac OS X and Windows, and quantitiative benchmarks on a MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro and a Fujitsu Lifebook A6025. One Step Tests: In XP, Parallels is 17% faster than VMWare Fusion on XP and 1% faster than Boot Camp. In Vista, VMware Fusion ran 46% slower than Boot Camp, and Parallels ran 44% slower than VMware Fusion.
Multi Step (Cross platform) Tasks: Parallels was 6x faster than VMWare on XP, and 5.2x faster on Vista. A number of application specific benchmarks were also undertaken using Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet Explorer and more. These results are detailed in their along with relevant graphs.
![Vmware fusion Vmware fusion](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125509772/468040023.jpg)
Their final conclusion, however, sums up the results as follows. Both VMware Fusion and Parallels performed well, and were a good user experience. That said, Parallels was somewhat faster in general than VMware Fusion for XP. If you want the best virtualization performance for Vista, then VMware Fusion is your choice. Of course, if you are not interested in coexistance with Mac OS X, naturally, Boot Camp is your best option.
Note: both Parallels and VMware Fusion have been updated since these benchmarks were performed. Since VMware has multi-core support, the author speculates that specific multi-core tasks may perform better on VMware than Parallels, but these scenarios were not tested. In the tests they did perform, however, they saw no speed advantage from VMware's multicore support. That being said suggest that the VMware multicore support is a substantial advantage when performing their multimedia multitasking test.