parallels vs original Virtual PC (win 98)

[EvanAdams]

Ok so a LONG time ago I had Virtual PC with Win 98 (maybe 95?) and it worked well to run UPS World Ship. However... one day everything blew up and I got burned big time...

I realize things have to have improved but by how much? Do you still get random bombs lockups and corrupted virtual drives? What sort of horsepower do I need to get paralles to run things like Office and IE on .net websites? What sort of mac horse power equivilant to what PC?

 

[Kaido]

The new versions of the VM software are extremely stable, especially VMware Fusion (I've had a few bugs in Parallels 3.0).

As far as horsepower goes, at the very least you'll need an Intel processor. You will want a dual-core processor to get the most out of a VM. The big key is memory - the more memory you can give a VM and still have enough leftover for OS X, the better. So if you can get 2 gigs or more in your machine, you can split it up and give 512mb or a gig to your VM and still have 1.5gb or 1.0gb for OS X to run on. You could probably go 512mb/512mb, but things will probably get kinda sluggish. You don't need anything very powerful for just running Office and IE in a VM.

A Mac Mini would do the trick nicely!

 

[timswim78]

I have used both Parallels and VMWARE Fusion. I have found the Fusion to have less bugs than the Parallels. As Kaido said, you'll need an Intel CPU. On my iMac, I have it setup so that one processor core and 2GB of RAM goes to Windows, and the other 2GB of RAM and processor core is used by OS X. I have run Illustrator in Windows, while running Photoshop in OS X, without any problems. Needless to say, running Office is a breeze.

Unless you are running games, you will find that the speed of Windows running under Parallels or Fusion is quite fast.

I have not had any corrupted disks: however, Parallels froze on me several times and caused my entire system to crash. Fusion has been rock-solid.

 

[GhettoFob]

I haven't had any problems with Fusion. I don't have much experience with Parallels though.

 

[bearxor]

I've had nothing but trouble out of Fusion.

It's slower that Parallels. The cross machine copy sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. It's feels very buggy to me. Now I have a problem where if I close the lid on my MBP Windows will think that caps lock is on and OS X will think it is off. So if I want to type in one or the other I have to change my caps lock key or restart VMWare. It won't let me install Java or Flash in Internet Explorer. It acts like it will and then just times out, but any website I go to works fine. From what I remember (and forgive me if I'm wrong because it has been a few months, but in Parallels, when running in Cohesion, if you had the task bar on the screen and minimized a windows, it minimized straight to the taskbar. In Fusion, it minimizes to the task bar AND the dock. It never restarts in the mode I've asked it to be in. If I shut down windows and it was in Unity mode, when it restarts it will be back in windowed mode until I click the Unity button.

When I was using my trial version of Parallels, it was running all the time. Now, I only run Fusion when I have to. I've got the latest version and 2GB of RAM now dedicated to it and 2GB to OS X. It also seems to run slower when I check the option for two virtual cores.

Most people seem to love it. I don't get it. I think that if you're a life-long Mac user, you seem to like Fusion better and if you're a windows convert (like myself) Parallels seems to be more favored.

 

[freegeeks]

I use parallels all the time and with a little bit of tweaking it runs rock solid. Most of the time I have 2 to 3 linux VM running at the same time. The most important thing I noticed is that OS X needs 1 GB of ram or else my system grinds to a halt. I'm waiting for Apple to release a laptop where you can use 8GB of ram.

 

[Kmax82]

My experience with Fusion and Parallels is completely opposite to bearxor. I found Parallels to be riddled with bugs, slow performance, lack luster copying between OS's, and overall just a huge burden on my machine. I don't know why, but I ran Fusion and Parallels side by side with Windows XP VM's on my local machine, and sitting idle, Parallels uses 5-10% of my CPU resources and about 2 GB of virtual memory, where as, Fusion was idling at about .5-1% of my CPU resources and 1 GB of virtual memory.

And in use, Fusion just felt snappier. Windows opened quicker, very little screen lag in Unity, and it allows you to use Mac shortcuts in Windows without bringing up the stupid Start menu every time you press the Command key...

They both have 15 day trials, so I say give 'em both a shot and see which you prefer. Ultimately it'll come down to which one you want to use and feel more comfortable with.

 

[EvanAdams]

well a trial... ok that is what I will do.

Now for the upgrade.

Will a mac mini 2ghz core duo and 2gig of ram be enough or do I really need more?

I wish there was a desktop option (that didn't have monitor, mouse, keyboard) that was not more money than the laptops.

 

[Stiganator]

I didn't like how parallels added multiple network connections and it was buggier for me including their granddaddy update. Fusion has worked great for me though and the networking is under the table.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: EvanAdams
well a trial... ok that is what I will do.

Now for the upgrade.

Will a mac mini 2ghz core duo and 2gig of ram be enough or do I really need more?

I wish there was a desktop option (that didn't have monitor, mouse, keyboard) that was not more money than the laptops.

I can run Vista in a VM with Fusion on my 1.83GHz Core Duo with 1GB RAM... so I think that the Core 2 2.0 with 2GB will do quite nicely

 

[randomlinh]

I've had better luck w/ parallels especially trying to copy 60GB across the VM and OS X. Parallels 3 was initially sluggish, but at it's current state it seems good to me. Both were mediocre w/ boot camp IMO (or I had far too high expectations maybe). Other than that, they were fairly neck and neck.

Now, on a Mac Pro at work, I tried out fusion... wow that was nice. same 2GB of ram... but 4 cores to play with, and fusion can support multiple cores.

My only concern w/ a mini is the 5400rpm HDD in a mac mini, but then again, I'm picky, heh

 

[Davegod75]

Does fusion have anything like parallels cohesion? That is pretty sweet.

 

[Parasitic]

I've never used VMWare Fusion, but Parallels was indeed buggy with the version right out of the box. However upon updating to the newest version it was more than fine.
I use my Parallels with Windows 2000 and assigned 512MB of memory to it out of my 2.5GB. No issues.

Parallels did mess up my bootcamp partition a little bit so I don't recommend linking it up with BC although it did that semi-automatically.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Davegod75
Does fusion have anything like parallels cohesion? That is pretty sweet.

Fusion's answer to Coherence is called Unity. It is a slightly better (IMO) implementation of it since now each window will respond to Expose, as opposed to a grouping of windows.

 

[Tegeril]

Horsepower CPU-wise is a non-issue. All these programs use hardware virtualization and have more or less direct access to your CPU without the need to translate code as you will recall was needed for PPC to x86 in the past.

RAM is what matters and Apple will rob you for DDR2. Also, is you want to run a 64 bit OS it won't happen with a regular core duo, need core 2 to have emt64