Fusion Is Latest Way For Macs to Operate Windows, PC Software
Despite all the attention to the new iPhone, a big part of the recent blistering success enjoyed by Apple has been an upsurge in the sales of the company’s Macintosh computers. While Mac sales still account for only a small share of world-wide computer sales, they have been growing three to five times as fast as overall PC sales.
In classrooms and offices, homes and coffee shops, Macs are far more visible in the U.S. than they were just a few years ago. Part of this success results from the fact that Macs are excellent machines that handle the most important and common tasks as well as — or better than — computers running Microsoft Windows.
But the new popularity of the Mac is also partly due to the fact that it can now run Windows along with Apple’s superior Mac OS X operating system. That means that if there’s a program you need that comes only in a Windows version, you can run it on any current Mac model, speedily and with all its features.
Starting next week, there will be a new way to do this. A company called VMWare, long the leader in what’s called “virtualization” — running multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer — will be selling a program called Fusion that allows Windows, and Windows programs, to run on a Mac.
I’ve been testing Fusion, and I’ve found it works well. For instance, as I write this column on a Mac laptop using the Mac version of Microsoft Word, Fusion is allowing me to simultaneously run several popular Windows programs — Microsoft Outlook, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer. Each is running in its own window, just as if it were a native Mac program. I can switch from one to the other rapidly and smoothly. Their icons show up on the Mac’s “Dock,” just like the icons for Mac programs.
In my tests, Fusion never slowed down my MacBook Pro laptop or two other Macs on which I tested it. As I write this, the Mac version of Word and all three Windows programs are performing normally, even though I am also running five other Mac programs. My MacBook Pro, which isn’t the latest or most powerful model, has two gigabytes of memory and an Intel processor that is a generation behind the current model.
Fusion, which will be available for $80 at vmware.com, becomes the third major option for running Windows software on a Mac. It will go up against a fine program called Parallels Desktop, also available for $80 at parallels.com and at retail stores. The third option is Apple’s own Boot Camp, currently a free product available at apple.com/bootcamp. Boot Camp will become a built-in feature of the next version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, due in October.
All three programs require users to purchase a full version of Windows and install it on the Mac. Like Fusion, Parallels is a virtualization program that allows you to run Windows and Windows programs simultaneously with the Mac operating system and Mac programs. Boot Camp works differently: It requires that you restart the Mac to switch into Windows, and it runs only one of the operating systems at a time.
In my tests, I compared Fusion and Parallels, which is its closest competitor. I used Windows XP Professional. Each also works with the new Windows Vista (and with older versions of Windows and various versions of the Linux operating system). But Microsoft has imposed a legal prohibition on installing the most common consumer versions of Vista, Home Basic and Home Premium, via virtualization programs.
The two programs are very similar. In most scenarios, they function nearly identically. Both allow you to run the full Windows desktop either in a window on your Mac or in full-screen mode. Alternatively, both allow Windows programs to float on their own, with the Windows desktop hidden, so they look and feel just like Mac programs. Both permit you to fetch and save files from folders already on your Mac. Both support copying and pasting between Mac and Windows programs. Both automatically use your Mac’s Internet connection.
Parallels has more features than Fusion. It comes with a set of utilities Fusion lacks, such as a program that can migrate the contents of a physical Windows PC into a Parallels virtual Windows PC, and another that allows you to retrieve files from the virtual Windows machine even when Parallels isn’t running. Parallels also has a nice feature that lets you assign any file to automatically open in a Windows program instead of a Mac program. And it makes it much easier to use a printer over a network than Fusion does.
But I found Fusion puts less strain on the computer overall. While I like Parallels and have used it since it came out, it sometimes slows down my Mac, especially when it is starting up Windows or performing some other major task. Fusion has a much smaller impact on the Mac’s overall performance.
You won’t go wrong with either program. Both give the Macintosh a level of versatility that can’t be matched by Windows-only machines.
- Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.
Comments
That is all well and good, and I’d love to have a Macbook, but as long as Apple’s decent laptops continue to start at $2000 ($600-$700 more than an equivalent Thinkpad), I just can’t justify it. I’d love to hope that Apple’s press event next week will include affordable hardware, but that’s not their usual business plan.
Posted by Fred Ochsenhirt at August 2nd, 2007 at 6:09 amI agree with the review. I have used both for quite some time and have chosen to stay with Fusion due to the lower impact on the OS. There is also an issue with Parallels that when you end Parallels completely it doesn’t free all the memory that it utilized. For me Fusion will be the choice.
Posted by Danny Byrd at August 2nd, 2007 at 7:28 amI just configured a T61 Thinkpad and it came to $1673.00 for a comparable configuration to a 15.4″ MacBook Pro. I selected Vista Ultimate, since the MacBook will ship with the “Ultimate” version of OS X, like all Macs. The Thinkpad ships with slightly lower resolution and no discrete graphics, so the difference is less than the indicated $356.
I am unsure where Mr. Ochsenhirt is getting his $600-700 price difference.
Posted by Jeff Householder at August 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 amFred and Jeff,
Posted by Greg Wostrel at August 2nd, 2007 at 8:12 amParallels Desktop and Fusion run just fine on a MacBook, which run 1099. and can easily be had for a few hundred less. Just check the refurb page at apple.com for example.Don’t get stuck thinking that a MacBook Pro is the only gear that can handle it. I have a co-worker who is running all the Adobe Creative Suite stuff AND parallels and it works fine.
Furthermore, the Macbook is a better comparison to the T61.
Posted by Greg Wostrel at August 2nd, 2007 at 8:15 amDear Walt,
I have many physicians who use my software (ComChart EMR) in their office on Macintosh computers. The biggest hurdle to using Macintosh computers, in a medical office, is voice recognition software. I have used Dragon NaturalSpeaking on my PC, IBM ViaVoice on my Mac and I am now experimenting with iListen on my Mac.
I, and many others, would be interested to know how Dragon NaturalSpeaking works using Parallels vs Fusion.
Hayward Zwerling, M.D., FACP, FACE
Posted by Hayward Zwerling at August 2nd, 2007 at 8:28 amComChart Medical Software
20 Research Place, Suite 300
North Chelmsford, MA 01863
HZMD@mac.com
http://www.comchart.com
I’ve been using both products on a MacBook with 2 GBs of RAM for several months. I starting using Parallels when version 2 first came out, and Fusion when the beta was first released to the public.
I found that I had more than a few system crashes with Fusion, most related to trying to use Unity. This problem continued to happen even when they moved to their early release candidates. I finally decided to settle on Parallels and that’s what I’m now using for day-to-day operations.
On balance, I like the functionality of Parallels better, but Walt is right that they are pretty close and you won’t go wrong with either one, with the caveat that the Unity problem actually got fixed in Fusion.
One bizarre thing I noticed with either product was that the MacBook’s fan would kick on when my company-supplied screen saver kicked in on the virtual machine. I’m not sure why that’s happening, but it is consistent in both Fusion and Parallels.
My guess is that the graphics card in the Pro is better than the Macbook and is better able to handle the overhead. As proof of that, if I don’t run either Parallels or Fusion and launch the Mac versions of Photoshop and Dreamweaver from CS3, the fan will kick on and stay on until I exit Photoshop. I think the MacBook just has less horsepower, even if the amount of memory is the same on both machines.
My recommendation is that Parallels works really well, and that if you’re using a MacBook, don’t count on doing a lot of heavy duty work. If you haven’t bought your Mac yet, get a Pro.
Posted by Ron Lockhart at August 2nd, 2007 at 10:54 amI’m planning on getting a MacBook Pro soon, and I plan to install Windows for testing websites in Explorer, but I’m also interested in games. Has anyone had experience with Windows FPS games running in either Fusion or Parallels? I’m sure the best option would be to use Boot Camp for games, but I also want the functionality of a virtual machine, plus because of Microsoft’s licensing, I think I’d actually have to buy two copies of Windows - one for the VM and one for Boot Camp. Any thoughts?
Posted by Nick del Castillo at August 2nd, 2007 at 1:52 pmHi. I am a professional Windows software developer. When Vista was released, Microsoft tools told me that my very powerful laptop (desktop replacement) could run Vista Ultimate with all features fine. Well, after a lot of frustration and ultimately reformatting and rolling back to XP Pro, to say the least, I was extremely unhappy with Microsoft.
I had been considering a Mac for a long time, and this ordeal made up my mind. I am now a proud owner of a MacBook Pro. I tried Parallels Desktop for the trial period and then purchased it. I am completely happy with that decision. I continue to run my development software on Windows XP Pro, including Visual Studio, and Adobe CS3. I didn’t consider Fusion simply because I needed a solid solution in a mature product.
I would also say that I am equally impressed with the Parallels team policies. I was given a free update to the new version 3 when it was released last month, because of the short time since I had actually bought 2.5. Bravo!
Version 3 now has support for graphics intensive 3D games. I have not had the time to try any of my favorites yet, they do have an extensive list of games that have been tested prior to the release. So, Mr del Castillo, I think it should work fine, and I’m excited to make the time in the near future to try it myself.
Bottom line, IMHO, Parallels is a mature solution that I have purchased, so I don’t see any reason to consider another purchase. As for VMWare & Fusion, I use VMWare server for the network at work (also the admin there), and we love it. We eliminated 4 physical servers, and have replaced them with virtual servers. I personally think, especially with 3.0, that Parallels has enough useful features over Fusion, that I would recommend it over the newer product. Who knows how fast Fusion will mature and evolve.
Enjoy!
Posted by Scott Wickham at August 2nd, 2007 at 4:22 pmIt was said that parallels has more features than fusion, can someone list these features (specific examples)?
Posted by sidney taylor at August 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 pmHave anyone tried the http://www.codeweavers.com/
Posted by Aldwin A at August 2nd, 2007 at 7:59 pmfor mac?
Don’t forget VirtualBox Walt.
In no way does it compare to the full features of Parallels or Fusion. In fact a side-by-side reviews of VirtualBox with the other two would look pitiful.
But if you need to use IE for the occasional web page that is Safari unfriendly it works.
I’ve tried all three, and for the limited need I ever have for anything Windows free is a good price.
Posted by David Johnson at August 2nd, 2007 at 8:01 pmHayward,
My name is Pat Lee and I am the Product Manager for VMware Fusion.
We have a lot of happy VMware Fusion users running Dragon NaturalSpeaking in a Windows virtual machine. The users tell us they just connected a USB 2.0 headset, connected it to their virtual machine, and they are able to use Dragon NaturalSpeaking and it works great for them.
For best results, I would recommend Windows XP because it takes less resources and make sure you have enough RAM in your Mac (1 GB or 2 GB preferred).
Hope this information is helpful.
If you have any questions, join us in the VMware Fusion discussion forums.
Best,
Pat Lee
Posted by Pat Lee at August 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 pmSenior Product Manager - Mac Products
VMware
I have been a PC user all of my life. Just last Fall I bought an HP Pavilion notebook with Windows XP home edition, 2gb ram and 120gb hdd that cost me nearly $1600. Though it says vista capable, I have not been able to use all of the features on my notebook with Vista. I am thinking of switching to a Mac but want to use my windows software on my Mac. Has anyone tried codeweavers and if so are there any suggestions regarding it?
Posted by Mack Mulbah at August 2nd, 2007 at 11:25 pm-Nick del Castillo and Aldwin-
Check out CodeWeavers for sure. If anything, download the trial, install, then choose IE6 to install when it starts up. That’ll give you a low-impact (i.e. no Windows requirement) way to run IE and other apps. I’m truly amazed at the technology behind this product (it’s basically WINE for Mac).
Posted by Jon-Eric Eliker at August 3rd, 2007 at 4:59 amHi all –
I just bought buy MacPro laptop and am attempting to merge all of my computers (1 apple 1 PC) into 1. I was wondering if there was a way to transfer my history of emails from Outlook Express on my old PC laptop to my new MAC machine… Can anyone shed some light?
Posted by Priscila Neri at August 3rd, 2007 at 9:42 amWhen considering acquiring a MacBook I had the same reservation as Fred noted above because of the significant price differential.
I was also concerned because I reconstruct accidents and my analysis software is all windows or dos based.
I bought the Mac anyway and am elated I paid the extra price. When you have the two operating systems side-by-side you just find yourself working on the Mac side whenever you can.
It becomes shockingly clear how much time you waste in windows just dealing with window operational delays and issues.
At my billing rate I probably recouped the extra spent on the Mac in two or three cases by doing as much of my reports as possible–word processing and graphics on the Mac side.
I have no regret and in a practical sense am money ahead spending $3k for my MacBook as strange as that may seem.
john r bischoff
Posted by john bischoff at August 3rd, 2007 at 1:17 pmName is Ries here,
My last version of windows was W2K on a Dell laptop. Works great untill it slowed down quite a bit. After a re-install and many updates I made a decission to go for mac (MacBook 2GB).
When running Parallels with windows Xp it still runs great. Mac is truly a money saver compared to working with Windows.
I simply use parallels for some ocassionally windows IE6/IE7 testing that’s all as a web developer you have to do that.
Most of my fellow web develoeprs are switching to Mac and are happy since. I never tried Fuse since I bought parallels before Fuse was stable.
Ries van Twisk
Posted by Ries Twisk, van at August 3rd, 2007 at 4:38 pmhttp://www.rvantwisk.nl
Dr zwerling, I am running dragon naturally speaking 9 on windows xp under parallels 3.0. It works very smoothly on my MacBook pro and my dads macbook with 2gb memory. I use a Bluetooth headset and find it works better on my mac than pc. Hope this helps.
Posted by JD Busch at August 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 pmFusion actually has more important features than Parallels.
VMware’s free Converter application for creating a virtual machine from a real PC, is available as a separate download.
Fusion uniquely supports 64-bit EM64T virtual environments, which can not only manage more memory but generally run more efficiently than 32-bit X86 machines.
Fusion uniquely supports multi-core virtual environments, for even more speed.
Fusion has less CPU and memory overhead, because VMware’s technology makes better use of the virtualization features provided by the underlying hardware.
Posted by Fu Bar at August 4th, 2007 at 8:27 amBy the way, Fusion is currently half-price ($40) until the final release comes out on Monday, August 6. A full-function pre-release is available for free.
Posted by Fu Bar at August 4th, 2007 at 8:29 amLike Scott Wickham I am a developer and a consultant who got fed-up with Microsoft and their inability to get it right. Unlike some here who think it costs more to buy a Mac I do not. After pricing out a truly equivalent machine you really don’t pay more for a MacBook anything. In fact you start to save money in that upgrades are significantly more affordable and not limited by your pocketbook.
I also save time in that I do not need to restart my Mac OS nearly as much as my Windows XP install in Parallels. I would actually say that the Windows restarts under Parallels are fewer than on my Dell or Toshiba boxes. I especially like the fact that they actually sleep and hibernate where as my Windows native boxes would only do so 10% of the time.
It should also be noted that I am not only running Visual Studio 2005 but I am running a web server and SQL Server 2000 with a 6Gb database. Things can get slow at times but not really any worse than they were on the native box.
Added benefit is that I setup my Windows environment with all the settings and software that I want. I use the Mac OS for file storage and then when Windows gets all gummed up I simply copy over the virtual machine with the backup. Furthermore I can have a copy that is registered on a clients domain and another one that is for another clients domain. Yet they can all see my regular files.
Life is good on the MacBook Pro and I could never see myself looking back! Those who think that there is an extra cost you keep on thinking that so that we can continue getting a stream of stories about the issues you have with Microsoft.
Oh, and for the fellow who is looking to transfer his e-mails, there is a product from “Little Machines” that I used. It got many things transfered but quite honestly it did not get all. Take the trial and make sure you can connect with it first since I had issues surrounding the security policies locking down the old Dell I was using and had a real struggle with that as well.
Posted by Peter Schneider at August 4th, 2007 at 4:29 pmFred,
When you say “decent” laptop for $2000.00, I’m assuming you’re referring to the 15″ MacBook Pro. If you can put together an “equivalent” Thinkpad for $1300.00 - $1400.00, I’d like to see it.
Let’s sit down and do our homework like Jeff did. Try to spec out a comparable ThinkPad. Don’t forget the $350.00 worth of software equivalent to the iLife suite. Don’t forget the iSight camera or the MagSafe power connector, the illuminated keyboard, the built-in next-generation wireless, the Bluetooth connectivity, the ability to run two operating systems. And we won’t even discuss OS X vs. Windows. As a matter of fact, just forget the whole thing - you’re not going to find anything “equivalent” to the MacBook Pro at the price you want to pay for a “decent” laptop, or perhaps at any price in the Windows world.
Of course you can get a Hyundai for cheaper than a BMW, but what are you getting? You certainly won’t get that famously precise German engineering, plush Barvarian leather seats, and 0-60 in 4.5 seconds. Funny, we don’t see folks berating Mercedes because they don’t make a $15,000.00 sedan, but everyone knocks Apple because they refuse to make an el cheapo product.
One other thing - read the comments after yours. Have you noticed a common thread? Notice that everyone is discussing the relative merits of the software, no one is griping about issues with the Mac or OS X. That’s how it should be. To truly compare the platforms, you also have to assign a cost to your time and frustration. If you do this honestly, you will conclude that the Mac is a bargain.
Posted by Steven Thomas at August 4th, 2007 at 10:18 pmIs anyone else have a problem setting up a VPN on the windows XP VM Paralles. My IT dept needs help with this. Windows shows no netwok connections.
Posted by Greg Giniel at August 5th, 2007 at 12:32 pmPS
I have a Macbook, and I love it. My borther in law bought a Vista machine at the same time. It has crashed 4 times. You get what you pay for.
For me, the biggest advantage in running a Mac is that I don’t spend hours worry about and/or cleaning up viruses, spyware, and things that go bump in the night. Yes, maybe someday the bad guys may hack the Mac OS and do bad things, but so far—touch silicon—I’ve been running a Mac for 17 years with nary an attack. So when you figure how much more a Mac may cost (and lots of people above have shown it doesn’t cost more), ask yourself what your time is worth.
Posted by Arnie Keller at August 5th, 2007 at 5:48 pmHi, I’m currently saving up for a new mac that will be capable of running parallels or fusion, but I was just wondering if you need to run anti-virus/spyware (etc.) software? I’d have thought that you would but I’d just like to know for sure.
Posted by Michael Dean at August 6th, 2007 at 1:17 amThank you for the review of Fusion and the comparison to Parallels. I had been using Parallels for the past year plus, only using it for two Windows apps (Palm Desktop (because the Mac UI for it isn’t as good) of and Polar’s heart rate monitoring software). For Polar they both operated equally fine, with neither one of them letting you use the native Mac IrDA i/f, needing to plug in a USB one. The big problem I’ve seen throughout the whole Parallels experience was the syncing with Palm Desktop and its failing consistently about half the time. Having only used Fusion for about a week and buying a license yesterday I can say that it is way better than Parallels has ever been, working consistently on syncing Palm Desktop with a Treo. I may be in the minority of using Palm over Outlook and a Windows Mobile phone but it works a lot better for me. Running a Motorola Q phone with Notes side by side the Palm / Treo combination is way more stable.
As far as a Mac vs. Windows comparison I got my first Mac a little before Parallels, looking for a more stable (fewer lockups and reboots needed) laptop platform then a Intel / Windows combination. In general it has been more stable but it has not been without a number of problems that greatly contributed to a reduced level of ‘uptime’ to make the Mac not that more stable than a WinTel machine. Within the first six weeks I had both the battery fail (taking the machine down when on battery even when it showed 90%+ capacity) and even worse, the hard drive fail. Shame on me, I had let lapse my daily backups of the disk moving onto the ’superior’ Mac O.S. and lost about two weeks of data since the time of my last backup. The most interesting experience was with AppleCare’less’. Unless I’m missing something Apple has no regard for the business user, no urgency of repair and much less user serviceability. On the average Intel platform with a support plan you’d get a new disk in hand the next day or even the same day. With Apple, it’s a ’send it in for repair and we’ll get to you’. Plus, think twice about thinking you’re a smart shopper and saving some money buying an ‘officially’ refurbished Apple (MacBook Pro in this case) as you’ll likely get a very clear ‘message’ (from voice tone and inflection) that you bought crap. The conversation goes something like this. You start the call, you’re asked for your serial number and the response was always in a very disappointed tone of ‘oh, you bought a refurb’. Well Apple, if you’re going to sell refurbs you should educate your support staff that they are all the same. It ended up taking a contact with one of Steve Jobs’ designees to solve the problem which got me a whole ‘new’ one. There is no sense of urgency that I see in Apple’s support, no 24 / 7 support. The local Genius Bar, if you’re lucky enough to have one in your area, is a big help on repair responsiveness.
Far from being a computer newbie, I’ve been using the BSD Unix that OS/X is based on, since the early 80’s, as well as about every other Unix variant since then, as well as the Unix knock off, Linux, like that they all have stability in common, like even more the control that Apple has for stability making both the hardware and software like a Sun SPARC / Solaris or IBM pSeries / PPC, but I haven’t been that overwhelmed with it, seeing that running things like Excel on a four year old Dell laptop run just as fast as a now 1+ year old MacBook Pro with the 1st generation Core Duo (not duo two) and 2GB of RAM, something that should provide a much more satisfactory experience then I’ve seen overall.
How does Fusion address that? Granted my stick time with it has been a lot less than Parallels but for the apps that matter to me, Fusion does a much better job, and like others have noticed, the load and subsequent responsiveness is much better on Fusion than Parallels. Parallels is now just sitting in the ‘off’ mode on my Mac and I’m much happier with Fusion.
Dave
Posted by Dave Brown at August 6th, 2007 at 11:11 amI am not a computer guru by any stretch of the imagination. I have been, up until 6 months ago, a straight PC guy. I even jumped on the ” I hate Macs” bandwagon for quite some time. This January I bought an iMac and a MacBookPro and have been nothing but satisfied. I tried out Parallels because I thought I would miss some of my old programs (Word, Excel) and it did work great. I replaced all my Microsoft Office programs with NeoOffice, however because I began to despise using Office. I then replaced my only other PC program, Final Draft, with Celtx. I beleive the Mac community puts out far superior products than most of the PC-based programs on the market today. As far as Parallels goes, it was a great program, but I felt I didn’t need it any longer.
Posted by Brandon Bruce at August 7th, 2007 at 8:05 amMr. Brown, I think your experience with AppleCare is very isolated. I have called them 5 times with questions and concerns and never had the issues you are discussing. Once for an iPod that froze up for no apparent reason. They walked me through the reset process and when that failed, they mailed me the postage-paid box to mail it back for repairs. I recieved the box in about 2 days and a call followed 2 days after that. They couldn’t fix it so they mailed me a brand new one. The call came on a Saturday and they said it would be mailed Monday morning. Come Tuesday my brand new iPod was in my mailbox. They also helped me set-up a wireless network in my house when I bought an Airport. And they walked me through file transfers (a 2 hour phone call) between a PC, my iMac and my wife’s MacBookPro. Never once did I recieve the type of service you are referring to. Well, that is just the two cents from my side of the fence.
Brandon
I was chatting with the guy at the Genius bar at the apple store today, and he said that Fusion and Parallels are both good. However, Parallels has more difficulty recognizing USB devices, such as blackberry’s. Since I’ve just bought my first mac (a macbook pro), I’m going to try Parallels. I do like the fact that it has been around awhile. Also, I really just need it for running windows programs, and figure that the USB recognition is up to the mac os. I don’t use a blackberry, so not worried about that.
Any views?
td
Posted by Tom Duffy at August 7th, 2007 at 4:31 pmI use Qemu on my iMac G5 and run Linux, Windows and FreeDos all i386 code emulated by a 1.8Ghz G5 rather impressive and it’s free.
Posted by Ed March at August 7th, 2007 at 5:11 pmQemu also run on my SuSE linux and emulates Windows. For the few times I need windows, its good enough for me.
>>All three programs require users to purchase a full version of
>>Windows and install it on the Mac.
Woa, is this a fact ?
Posted by Bobbie Matelot at August 7th, 2007 at 7:34 pmTo run a Windows virtual machine in Fusuion…
one needs to actually INSTALL WINDOWS ON THE PHYSICAL MAC MACHINE ???
Please confirm/clarify.
thanks
I am convinced to get a MacBookPro and run a few Windows XP programs on it.
Posted by Bill Carter at August 7th, 2007 at 9:55 pmWhat is the best conversion program to bring these files over from my Dell laptop to the MAC?
“That is all well and good, and I’d love to have a Macbook, but as long as Apple’s decent laptops continue to start at $2000 ($600-$700 more than an equivalent Thinkpad), I just can’t justify it. I’d love to hope that Apple’s press event.”
Can we %$#@ing stop with this.
First, that $1300 Thinkpad is NOT equivalent to a MacBook Pro. Not even close.
Second, if you can’t justify spending that kind of money on a laptop, you shouldn’t even be looking at a MacBook Pro. Machines of that calibre — from ANY manufacturer — will cost approximately that much.
Third, that you ARE looking means you’ve said “I’m a professional. Obviously, I need a MacBook PRO.”
Thing is though — you don’t.
This is a general issue with Apple’s marketing strategy which — admittedly — has stymied their entrance into corporate America.
Fourth, the friends I have who do own MacBook Pros use them to do effects for big Hollywood movies. These guys are “professionals” in the MacBook Pro sense of the word.
They understand, need, and are willing to pay for the premium performance capabilities built into the MacBook Pro hardware.
What YOU actually need is a plain old everyday MacBook. And you’ll note that those are priced quite competively.
Posted by Royal McGraw at August 8th, 2007 at 11:03 amTo Dave Brown,
Check out MissingSync software to sync your pda (Palm or Windows Mobile) to your Mac (iCal, AddressBook, iPhoto, iTunes, etc.) So that only leaves your Polar software
I’ve been using MissingSync for my Treo (PalmOS) and it works great.
I know when I priced out my mini (1st gen) it was comparable, if not cheaper than a SIMILARLY configured Dell (because even with Dell, getting a PC exactly configured like a Mac just isn’t possible - never mind the software differences).
Next purchase will probably be a MacBook…
Posted by Mike Michaelson at August 8th, 2007 at 12:15 pmI have used Parallels for a very long time, and used all of the betas for Fusion. They are very close in functionality so ask yourself these questions:
1) Do you use VMWare outside of the Mac environment?
2) Do you want access to hundreds of Virtual appliances, free and ready for you to run on VMWare?
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/
3) Do you want software made by the leaders in virtualization?
If you answered yes to any of these you may want to look at getting Fusion.
I’m not knocking Parallels. It’s a great product and first to the market on the mac. I have a soft spot in my heart for these guys. However, it’s hard to dismiss a company that’s been perfecting this technology for years on Windows and Linux. That’s just my $0.02
Posted by JB Trexler at August 9th, 2007 at 10:49 pmI have been using Parallels for a while now, upgrading as each new version is released. I find it clunky and slow, recently switching to Fusion.
Fusion in my opinion is faster and has a more ‘Mac’ interface. VMware’s website is much nicer, their help slightly more useful and the overall experience seemed more ‘tuned’ to the Mac. I remember wading through Parallels FAQ and notes, getting lost and feeling like I was back in a confused PC world (it was an issue to do with having to use my Mac’s admin password every time I ran Parallels, which has something to do with running it with a Bootcamp partition).
Also I found Parallels wouldn’t compile some of my code: I got a compile error on Parallels, however it ran fine on VMware and my real PC.
So that is my 2c worth. I imagine VMware will get even better as time goes on but for my taste and performance it is just fine now.
I still think Parallels is an excellent product, however for my taste, I prefer the VM experience.
Posted by Match Duffal at August 11th, 2007 at 12:04 amJon-Eric,
Posted by Edward Stadum at August 13th, 2007 at 7:30 amThanks for this tip. I adopted it, downloaded the trial version of CrossOver for Mac from the CodeWeavers site, installed Internet Explorer on my MacBook Pro and it works just fine — I can now access a banking website that is only ported to IE and not to Firefox or Safari. I see on the CodeWeavers site that they have a database of several thousand Windows applications which are compatible with CrossOver for Mac (or vice versa). If the other applications work as well as the IE application, then I raise the question whether there is any need whatsoever for Parallels or Fusion. And CrossOver for Mac is slightly cheaper ($59.95) than Parallels or Fusion. I hope that Walt Mossberg will address this conclusion in a future column.
I have been researching and commenting on virtualization for a while now … and I read Mossberg’s articles all the time.
Personally, I have had nothing but wasted time and problems with Fusion. I’ve lost hours and hours of time trying to figure out how to fix fusions extensive problems.
Thanks Walt, but just because VMware has been around forever doesn’t mean it has a leg up.
Posted by Derek Styles at March 21st, 2008 at 1:01 pm