Well bugger me!

[scooterscot]

Out of interest, what didn't you like about Fusion compared to Parallels?

You can also boot directly from a USB drive (i.e booting not FireWire only now).

Not one thing but many little things however there's not much between them. For some reason I felt the Fusion was less stable - reliability was an issue. The major positive with Parallels is the support that's out there but that's probably because it has been about for longer. Although fusion can do a lot more I've not had the need for a 64-bit support or running a image the requires 8gig of memory, i mean how many people out there are doing that? Parallels UI I'd say is more friendly but perhaps that's just me. It's all about the little things...

[NickFitz]

I'm pretty much with scooterscot. As I think I mentioned earlier, I'd fire up a VMWare XP Pro image, and at that point I might as well leave my machine for ten minutes or so, because it would become unusable for that time for both Mac and Windows apps. This was on a PreviousClientCorp MacBook.

Doing the same with Parallels on my personal MacBook - which is an older model with a less capable processor - doesn't cause anything like such a problem. I can easily fire up a Windows machine and keep using the Mac side as it gets going, even if I then tell the virtual machine to fire up Visual Studio.

Other developers at PreviousClientCorp felt the same.

And Parallels does all the Windows-apps-running-on-the-Mac-desktop stuff (I have an IE6 logo in my dock that fires up the relevant VM and runs IE6 in it with one click) as well as the drag-and-drop between filesystems.

I'm still on Parallels version 2, but I believe version 3 also allows one to treat virtual machine drives as drives attached to the Mac, even if the VM isn't running. I don't know if VMWare offers that yet; it may, but I'm not switching to what is, in my experience, a product that causes serious detriment to the performance of the system as a whole, as compared to the alternative. Even if it all evens out after twenty minutes (and it did seem to do so), that's still too long for me to wait when I'm trying to work.

After all, the primary reason I ever have to run Windows is to test and debug the horrible things its web browsers do to code that every other browser copes perfectly with. Having it cripple my machine for twenty minutes is just adding insult to injury; and Parallels seems to prevent that happening, without sacrificing the performance of the Windows machine, in a way that VMWare doesn't.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

[bogeyman]

I'm pretty much with scooterscot. As I think I mentioned earlier, I'd fire up a VMWare XP Pro image, and at that point I might as well leave my machine for ten minutes or so, because it would become unusable for that time for both Mac and Windows apps. This was on a PreviousClientCorp MacBook.

Doing the same with Parallels on my personal MacBook - which is an older model with a less capable processor - doesn't cause anything like such a problem. I can easily fire up a Windows machine and keep using the Mac side as it gets going, even if I then tell the virtual machine to fire up Visual Studio.

Other developers at PreviousClientCorp felt the same.

And Parallels does all the Windows-apps-running-on-the-Mac-desktop stuff (I have an IE6 logo in my dock that fires up the relevant VM and runs IE6 in it with one click) as well as the drag-and-drop between filesystems.

I'm still on Parallels version 2, but I believe version 3 also allows one to treat virtual machine drives as drives attached to the Mac, even if the VM isn't running. I don't know if VMWare offers that yet; it may, but I'm not switching to what is, in my experience, a product that causes serious detriment to the performance of the system as a whole, as compared to the alternative. Even if it all evens out after twenty minutes (and it did seem to do so), that's still too long for me to wait when I'm trying to work.

After all, the primary reason I ever have to run Windows is to test and debug the horrible things its web browsers do to code that every other browser copes perfectly with. Having it cripple my machine for twenty minutes is just adding insult to injury; and Parallels seems to prevent that happening, without sacrificing the performance of the Windows machine, in a way that VMWare doesn't.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

I'm astonished that Fusion bogs your MacBook down for so long. Ten minutes?

I must admit I've never run it on a *book, only on a fairly well-spec'd iMac, where it seems pretty nifty.

The only thing I use WinXP for now is my ancient accounting software, QuickBooks V3 (1994 vintage!), Visual Studio 2005, Visio, and the odd bit of browser testing.

[NickFitz]

I'm astonished that Fusion bogs your MacBook down for so long. Ten minutes?

I must admit I've never run it on a *book, only on a fairly well-spec'd iMac, where it seems pretty nifty.

The only thing I use WinXP for now is my ancient accounting software, QuickBooks V3 (1994 vintage!), Visual Studio 2005, Visio, and the odd bit of browser testing.

Actually, thinking about it, when I worked for that client previously at a different site I had to suffer using a Windows machine, and that took about ten minutes to start up as well. It seemed to get bogged down with interminable scripts that it ran on startup, joining the AD domain, and so forth. I suspect their corporate network could do with some tweaking.

This probably contributed to the problems, as the Windows VM would join the AD domain and so forth at startup. (This caused great confusion when I copied the original VM image, upgraded the copy to IE7, then ran both images at the same time - it appears that AD isn't very happy with there being two machines with the same name on the network, talking through the same Ethernet connection )

[bogeyman]

Actually, thinking about it, when I worked for that client previously at a different site I had to suffer using a Windows machine, and that took about ten minutes to start up as well. It seemed to get bogged down with interminable scripts that it ran on startup, joining the AD domain, and so forth. I suspect their corporate network could do with some tweaking.

This probably contributed to the problems, as the Windows VM would join the AD domain and so forth at startup. (This caused great confusion when I copied the original VM image, upgraded the copy to IE7, then ran both images at the same time - it appears that AD isn't very happy with there being two machines with the same name on the network, talking through the same Ethernet connection )

Yes Nick, that sort of makes sense.

The establishment of networking at boot time has always been a fairly painful process in Windows.

I suppose because I don't have a complex networking setup on my main workstation (iMac 24) VMWare boots the winXP image fairly rapidly (about 1 minute from cold, or 40 seconds from 'resume').

Mind you, why are we complaining? This sort of thing would have been impossible 4 years ago. If I needed Windows at full throttle, I'd get a dedicated box for it.

Fortunately, I have to visit the Wonderful World of Windows less and less.

[bogeyman]

Not one thing but many little things however there's not much between them. For some reason I felt the Fusion was less stable - reliability was an issue. The major positive with Parallels is the support that's out there but that's probably because it has been about for longer. Although fusion can do a lot more I've not had the need for a 64-bit support or running a image the requires 8gig of memory, i mean how many people out there are doing that? Parallels UI I'd say is more friendly but perhaps that's just me. It's all about the little things...

Scooter, I suppose, as ever, the devil is in the details, in the little things.

I must say, I have had no major stability problems with Fusion, but then again, I'm probably not the most demanding user.

I have a couple of XP, 2K and Ubuntu images under VMWare. If anything, it's Ubuntu that gives me the most problems (odd 'jerky' mouse behavior, sometimes doesn't register clicks inside/outside client window, freezes up for a second etc.).

Still, I spend 90% of my time in OS X, so I can live with these minor inconveniences.

[Spacecadet]

Actually, thinking about it, when I worked for that client previously at a different site I had to suffer using a Windows machine, and that took about ten minutes to start up as well. It seemed to get bogged down with interminable scripts that it ran on startup, joining the AD domain, and so forth. I suspect their corporate network could do with some tweaking.

I used to have the same problem with my laptop when I was a permie.
Solution? startup and login to windows BEFORE plugging the network cable in

[scooterscot]

Scooter, I suppose, as ever, the devil is in the details, in the little things.

I must say, I have had no major stability problems with Fusion, but then again, I'm probably not the most demanding user.

I have a couple of XP, 2K and Ubuntu images under VMWare. If anything, it's Ubuntu that gives me the most problems (odd 'jerky' mouse behavior, sometimes doesn't register clicks inside/outside client window, freezes up for a second etc.).

Still, I spend 90% of my time in OS X, so I can live with these minor inconveniences.

I find myself only using the XP image for a reliability software package and nothing else these days. I had thought of getting dedicated box but I like having the space instead. Like you said 4 years ago such things would not have been possible, it's amazing.

[NickFitz]

Isn't it interesting that all the people using Macs say that, as time goes by, their need for Windows dwindles to one or two applications, which are either recondite in purpose, or are by definition tied to the Windows platform?

What? Not interesting?

Sorry, I'll shut up then

[Diver]

Isn't it interesting that all the people using Macs say that, as time goes by, their need for Windows dwindles to one or two applications, which are either recondite in purpose, or are by definition tied to the Windows platform?

What? Not interesting?

Sorry, I'll shut up then

What's a Mac?

Are they similar to real computers?