sun virtualbox vs parallels vs vmware fusion

Then, in features beyond Windows integration: There aren't a whole lot of appliances-preconfigured packages that let you install other operating systems, like variations of Linux-as compared to VMWare, and there are stability issues I've had to close down the entire virtual machine a number of times over the course of testing, and I couldn't identify a particular trigger. Parallels' Windows powers are unsurpassed, but come at a cost.

If you're serious about gaming on a Mac, just install Windows natively using Boot Camp.) It's kind of like magic! (Games like BioShock or Crysis will run, but unless you've got a top-end iMac, you'll probably suffer from serious slowdowns. Windows 7's system-wide transparency effects, powered by Aero, work fine out of the box with Parallels you can enable OS X's multitouch touchpad gestures for MacBooks in the OS with a simple options menu pulling an installation over from a Boot Camp partition is just a matter of walking through a wizard sharing files and clipboard items between OSes was trivially easy.ĭirectX support is legitimately good enough to actually run a mid-range game without terrible performance degradation. Parallels' strength lies in how thorough it is in trying to make Windows integration seamless.

This has the dual effect of making the OS look more natural when it's running in windowed mode (where the OS is isolated to its own window, like an app), and making the so-called 'Crystal' mode, which lets you run Windows apps as their own windows in OS X, and which integrates Windows menus into Apple's operating system, such that it's barely even clear that you're not running native apps. Installation is almost completely hands off, and once you've got it up and running, it can actually be themed to look more like OS X. This is a paid solution, and while it's a full virtualization suite - you can run Linux and other OSes from within OS X as well - it's the one most purely dedicated to making running Windows 7 as seamless as possible.

Sun virtualbox vs parallels vs vmware fusion