I need to install a Windows 7 virtual machine on my MacBook Air (6,2—128GB), and I've looked at both Fusion 8 and Parallels Desktop 11. They cost the same, have pretty much exactly the same features, both support El Capitan, etc… Does anyone have an opinion as to which is better, or does it not really matter? Both claim they're the best…
Hi Bob,
Fwiw, I've used various versions of both (including the latest of Parallels) and I think both are excellent. However, I would steer you towards Parallels for choice. The reasons I prefer Parallels are many and mostly subtle so I won't attempt to enumerate them here as that would be an essay - there are also quite a few very detailed (and fairly impartial) comparison articles out there for that.
I will just mention that I find their compression of the VM to be better than Fusion, which will probably be more significant on a 128GB SSD, that I have a more fine-grained control over the balance of resources between OS X and the VM, and that I find Parallel's VMs to be that bit snappier, both loading and running, in spite of greater compression and the same allocation of resources.
Finally, I think the race would be closer on a non-Windows VM, but Parallels really does seem to have the edge with Windows.
Just my two cents 🙂
Max.
Hi Bob,
Fwiw, I've used various versions of both (including the latest of Parallels) and I think both are excellent. However, I would steer you towards Parallels for choice. The reasons I prefer Parallels are many and mostly subtle so I won't attempt to enumerate them here as that would be an essay - there are also quite a few very detailed (and fairly impartial) comparison articles out there for that.
I will just mention that I find their compression of the VM to be better than Fusion, which will probably be more significant on a 128GB SSD, that I have a more fine-grained control over the balance of resources between OS X and the VM, and that I find Parallel's VMs to be that bit snappier, both loading and running, in spite of greater compression and the same allocation of resources.
Finally, I think the race would be closer on a non-Windows VM, but Parallels really does seem to have the edge with Windows.
Just my two cents 🙂
Max.
Either will work fine.
I've used both and could never tell any difference in performance.
As you've noted, the differences would be mostly personal preferences.
Thanks for the helpful info. I was on the fence about it, but hearing about your positive experience with Parallels makes the decision easier. Thanks!
