Parallels vs. VMware

[williamsbh76]

I've been a Mac user since 2011 and have had to rely on Parallels to run Windows just to use IE for one state website that I use consistently all day at work. The website is way behind the times and is optimized for IE 9 if that tells you anything. Some basic functions will work in Chrome and Safari but for the most part IE has to do the heavy lifting. Everything else I do in my workflow is all OSX... Not changing.... Period... I've had enough of Windows and PCs all together. Not knocking it for other's, just not for me anymore.

Just as with Mavericks, I am expecting Parallels 9 to "not work" for Yosemite which will force me to upgrade and shell out another $80 each for the two Macs I use. I have read up on VMware as an alternative and understand it is cheaper, one license is good for three computers, and they support future OSX updates without additional costs for several years. I just want to get some feedback on it before I make the switch.

I know it would be simple for me just to run Bootcamp but I would have to run it all day long and I did not switch to Mac just to run and work in Windows all day long. I don't have problems paying developers for their work either but asking me to shell out $80 per Mac every year for some basic compatibility updates hardly seems fair.

Any feedback is appreciated and please don't diss me or try to argue me back to PC. That's not what this is about and you won't change my mind. Thanks!

 

[williamsbh76]

Thank you and I will definitely check that out. And I may have been wrong about the supported version. Sadly this is the same folks who are still running ancient computers with XP and they seem to have no plan to change lol.

 

[jsntrenkler]

I can confirm that parallels 9 works on Yosemite.

 

[Trees]

I recently tried a migration from Parallels 9 to Fusion 6.3. Ran into an issue with the imported VM failing to boot into the Windows 7 Guest OS.

The blue screen was so fast right afer the VM cleared BIOS Post that I couldn't see an error code, or get in a keystoke to halt the process. Was conducting Easter Egg hunts on possible source(s), but without specifics couldn't meaningfully narrow down the problem. There was more troubleshooting required (leaving out for brevity).

I didn't feel like spending tons more time on it (have a family, job, other stuff like that), so blew away the Fusion VM disk file and copied over an instance of the source Parallels VM on the NAS back to my MacBook. This of course took more time as writes to the single 7.5K drive were the bottleneck.

While I respect VMware and their products, just didn't have more time to burn. Parallels has been working fine, just wanted to try something different.