VMware Fusion 3 - Windows on the Mac Made Easy

[Rob Williams]

Own a Mac, but require the use of Windows from time to time? With today's robust virtualization solutions, there are far better alternatives than rebooting with Bootcamp or using emulation. VMware's Fusion 3 is one of these, and we put it to the test to see whether or not it's worth its $80 price tag, or if free alternatives would suffice.

You can read Brett's full look at VMware's latest gem here and discuss it here!

 

[Brett Thomas]

Hey all, I just wanted to put a note here -

Many Mac users will probably say "Fusion isn't your only option, there's Parallels!" I have personally used parallels through 4.0 and found it to be way slower and lack considerable features (like unity) that set VMWare's offering apart. Parallels has been, in my experience, Virtualbox with a price tag. I should have put it in the article, but it was so far out of my mind when I was writing this that I didn't even think to.

That said, I have been told that Parallels 5 offers a LOT of new options not present in 4. I think I'll be taking a look at that, coming up.

 

[MacMan]

The new Parallels 5 is definitely better when it comes to features, but when it comes to performance Fusion 3.0 is still the champ. Parallels feels like it was rushed out the door a little bit too quickly, but that aside, if they ever get the performance to match than VMWare better watch out! Still, I much prefer to BootCamp as it turns a Mac into a 100 % honest-to-goodness PC, especially when used with a genuine PC keyboard. One the other hand, if you just want to run the occasional PC program, then Fusion is just fine.

 

[Rob Williams]

We'll get Parallels 5 in for sure, so that we can have a more fair comparison. Both Fusion 3 and Parallels 5 came out at about the same time, so the latter might pack in some surprises.