Early Bird : Parallels Desktop 8 For Mac
I am just curious as to what folks here are using for hosts for virtual Windows (7-10) machines here and if they found any challenges or peculiarities. I'll start by saying that the Parallels interface is more 'Mac friendly' and that Fusion is more streamline if not Spartan in appearance. One negative for Fusion so far, is that upon opening either Win 7 or Win 10 virtual on a 2015 rMBP, the temp immediately jumps up by about 20 degrees F.
Parallels does not seem (set up the same with 2 of 4 core and 8 of 16 gig RAM) to suffer the same spike of energy consumption that is somewhat maintained causing the fan to run faster. anyone else notice this as well? For now, I would probably on mere handling find that I would recommend Parallels (though I prefer the Fusion experience) to the typical Mac user. Your thoughts and experiences as well as opinion on the Black Friday/cyber Monday deals both companies had.
(Parallels offered more software while VMware gave slightly more discount). Click to expand.I'm a Parallels user who will probably be switching to Fusion at the next forced upgrade because of Parallels' licensing model. I could cope with a (not too expensive) upgrade every 2-3 years (seemed like it needed upgrading after every second OS X upgrade) but it looks more and more like they're moving towards subscriptions. Last straw was moving some of the networking options into the (subscription only) 'Pro' edition. The corresponding features in Fusion also require their 'Pro' edition, but at least that's a one-off, price difference, upgrade. If you just have one or two annoying bits of obscure windows software that you need from time-to-time, but that aren't your 'daily driver' apps, try VirtualBox first.
It lacks the performance, polish and slick MacOS integration of the others but it might get the job done. If you just want to spin up Linux VMs for server-side/web development, virtualbox is perfect for the job (although, in that case, you might also want to check out Docker). I have been using VMWare Fusion for the last few years and I really don't have anything bad to say about it at all. Of course, I don't like having to pay for upgrades for it any more than for anything else. I have not studied the situation with Parallels upgrades that some find distasteful. I did consider both Parallels and Virtualbox at the time of my purchase decision, but did not test either one of them.
I had plenty of advice about Parallels from coworkers who deployed it in our corporate environment though. If I had to choose something currently, I would probably test Virtualbox first. That is because it is free and I hear it is good enough.
I'm back on the 'spend money only if really need be' plan, so I'd have to really be sold on VMWare to pay for it. Notes on my use: I do not play games in VMs, except I did do test runs of some legacy Windows XP compatible games in a VMWare instance back a few years ago when I first got Fusion. I create 'pure' VMs in that I don't want features from the host OS to bleed through into the VMs themselves. Other than having a few folders set up for sharing files into the VMs, I don't want ANY features or menus or even 'looks and feels' to bleed through. I do use VM for business in the following way: I create a VM of each Windows version I do support work for. I then test install software and use the VMs to mimic/recreate issues that my users report to me.
I picked both VMWare fusion and 'Other' because VMWare offers EXSi as well as the main goal. Where as it seems Parallels is more acting like a bunch of more features rolled up into a virtualization product. Instead of the main goal.
VMWare does have a few options as well which could be unnecessary, but Parallels by far has many more i gotta disable. For that reason, my choice is VMWare. Performance is still pretty good in Fusion, Windows Guests are the main performance. But run OS X as a guest and it all goes to hell Although it's usable, even at with 'Use full screen for Retina display' checked to make use of the non DPI. Fusion doesn't use for double scaling (Yes.
Early Bird : Parallels Desktop 8 For Mac Free
Everything is super small) even at full screen refresh rate in Guest OS X feels almost like booting 'Safe boot' on Mac, excluding the visible refresh lines. I'm currently using Fusion on my new to me late 2013 rMBP 15'. I've got an install of Win. 7 32 bit running on it, primarily to access a few CAD programs I occasionally use.Installed and set up real easily. Running inside a 10.9.5 install.
No problems so far, but it's only been installed for around a month. I've played around with Virtual Box and it runs fine and it's free. But it took a while to set up and seemed to be maybe a bit slower than Fusion and Parallels. Had Parallels some years back and didn't particularly care for it. No particular reason, sometimes you get a piece of software you don't like but use because it solves a problem for you. So I didn't upgrade when I updated OSX. Click to expand.Absolutely yes with Parallels.
I like parallels coherence mode better, but if you create a macOS VM you will see:. The VM creates a 65Gb drive. The Drive is of type expanding. It is a GUID partition There is NO WAY I CAN FIND to change the drive (partition) size before it is created. If you know how, please post a response.
I tried literally for a week to resize the partition (you can resize the drive NOT the partition). Found a Parallels KB article that said cannot resize a GUID partition in Parallels. Now that's what I call the perfect storm from Mr Parallels:. Here's a 65Gb GUID partition.
Parallels Desktop 12 For Mac
You cannot change the size until you get into the installation process. Disk utility keeps saying success when you change the size (it's just BS'ing you). Oops, Parallels doesn't know how to change a GUID partition So I am now converting everything to fusion.
Fusion does indeed allow you to change a GUID partition (or at least the partition they create when you create a macOS VM. And as an aside I tried to import my 256Gb macOS VM to parallels. Both times it finished (after about 4 hours) then said there was an error and pointed me to how to fix a Windows partition, absolutely wonderful. Click to expand.EDIT: I managed to get a 256Gb macOS VM and restore my TimeMachine backup into a Parallels VM, no thanks to Parallels who do NOT support resizing HFS+ partitions (EVEN WHEN YOU CREATE THE PARTITION). I'm trying to be polite, but these guys are idiots.
Anyway, the trick I found is to convert the drive to coreStorage, resize using DiskUtil and revert from coreStorage to HFS+, that worked.