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Upgrade Parallels or buy Fusion
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status:
Offline
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Hello, I'm a long-time user of VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Currently, I have Fusion v4 and Parallels v7 running Windows 8.1 and various Linux distros (e.g. Mandriva, Mint, Fedora, Debian, etc.) on my 2006 1,1 MacPro with 7GB memory and a (flashed) ATI 5770 GPU.
My question is should I upgrade Parallels to v9 or upgrade Fusion to v6? To me, they both seem about the same in terms of speed but Fusion seems to have better Linux compatibility and Parallels seems to be better with running Windows. Other than the annual "upgrades" Parallels forces users to buy for bug fixes, what would you recommend in terms of upgrade paths?
Basically, I'm asking if there's something I'm missing as I'm leaning towards Fusion v6 (e.g. will I be able to transfer my Windows 8.1 and Office 2010 licenses easily)? Thanks.
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"Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes." Frank Drebin, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: yes
Status:
Offline
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Have you checked out Virtualbox recently? I haven't compared it to Parallels or Fusion in ages, but it's been working great for me.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
Status:
Offline
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I did try VirtualBox a year ago and wasn't impressed. Reviews consistently show VirtualBox is much slower than either Parallels or Fusion, harder to use, and less polished. I don't mind paying $49 to upgrade Parallels or Fusion but am not a fan of Parallels and don't want to go through the hassle of calling MS to explain why I'm registering Office and Windows 8.1 on a "new" machine.
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"Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes." Frank Drebin, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
Status:
Offline
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Parallel's business model is pretty close to a scam, imo, forcing users into paid upgrades with every major OS X release. They're shamelessly taking advantage of Apple's commitment to low-cost (now no-cost) OS X updates. If they wanted to be honest about it, they would just switch to a subscription model. I ditched them for VirtualBox for this reason and have been happy so far.
Does Fusion use the same upgrade tactics as Parallels? If not, and if you really don't want to go with VirtualBox, I'd lean towards them for the sake of principle alone.
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Senior User
Join Date: Jan 2008
Status:
Offline
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Ditto to gradient...
It seems every year. we're asked to pony up more funds for the latest version of Parallels that magically is 20-30% faster than the previous version, has great new features I'd never use and has fixes for the bugs from the previous version (while introducing its own). I'm not trying to beat up on Parallels intently as they have the right to pursue a business model that allows them to succeed, but the practice has grown old for my needs.
That stated, I like Fusion 6 after recently converting from Parallels 7 (in lieu of upgrading to P8 or P9). Was a breeze, got a discount, and had no issues w/ Windows 7. Performance-wise, I can't tell a real difference. The biggest challenge is if you're an existing Parallels user and switching to Fusion, thus learning the new features and how they work...which isn't that big of a challenge.
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