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Way to Run Windows and Linux on Your Intel Mac, Alan Zisman, Go ahead and buy it, but if VirtualBox serves your needs, I highlyĪfter all, the price can't be beat. If you can afford the extraįeatures of VMware Fusion and it's appropriate for your intended uses, Passably in a basic consumer environment. Fusion can work in a serverĮnvironment, and VirtualBox has enough user-friendliness to serve Win-Win SituationĮven though the two products are good at different things, they areīoth still fairly general purpose.
OS X Server itself: The license restrictions only allow Server toīe virtualized on Apple hardware. Of the virtual machines, I doubt we will ever see it support Mac I could easily see VirtualBox becoming a leading solution for server Managed with no need to ever touch the target server. In fact, the whole setup process can be remotely
Server while still allowing direct interface access through remoteĭesktop protocols. This program excels in server roles: The virtual machines areĭesigned to easily run hidden in the background of a remotely managed Since these are qualities thatĪppeal to the average consumer, this product is popular in thatĪbove features, but it offers many features that are quite useful toĪnother important sphere: server virtualization and other IT uses.Īmong these unique advantages are finely grained virtual hardwareĬontrol, complete command line management of machines, headless remoteĭesktop display modes, and easy virtual machine portability to Linux
Printer interfacing, a free one-year subscription to McAfee VirusScan Several very friendly consumer features - among them are automatic Different Aims, Different Talentsįor the purposes of this review, I found most direct comparisonsĬompletely pointless. Although bothĪre virtualization solutions, each product is targeted towards entirelyĭifferent computing segments. In this case, I could not declare a definite winner. Virtualization products for the Mac, VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop.Īfter declaring Fusion the winner, I promised to bring a comparison
I didn’t want to upgrade to Parallels 6 because they annoy me with their $49 upgrade price that you have to pay every year.In my previous column, I reviewed the two major commercial However, I’ve used VMware and skipped Parallels 3 and 4 because they were more unstable and slow (for me). I’m personally using Parallels 5 these months, because it worked better than VMware 3.1 for my Visual Studio C# very big solution. If you’re serious about finding the best virtualization solution for your scenario, I suggest you take the appropriate time to test all three options yourself.
The advantage you have is that VirtualBox is free, so you can start trying it now, and both VMware and Parallels offer trial versions you can try. For a lot of stuff VirtualBox is enough, but it’s still (as far as I understand) slower than its two (only) competitors. VirtualBox’s advantage was (and still is) price.
NET code inside those Windows and the speed of VMware and Parallels was superior (I went ahead and clocked different timings). Having extensively used VMware Fusion (all the versions from 1 beta till 3.1), Parallels (from their first public release till 5.x -haven’t yet upgraded to 6) and a lot of VirtualBox versions (Although I stopped using it six months ago), I can say that for Windows both Parallels and VMware ran circles around VirtualBox in terms of features, compatibility and speed.