Aaron Lerch

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro. So far, I’m really enjoying my experience. The first computer I used was a Mac - my dad bought a Mac Plus when it first came out (and has never used a windows machine since), and I have fond memories of the two of us sitting at the kitchen table going through the “how to use a mouse” tutorial. Ahhh, good times.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, the reasons I pulled the trigger to buy a Mac are because I can run Windows on it, the hardware is superb, and I want to get used to a Mac again (for no particular reason). My dad, if he were reading this, probably just disowned me for putting Windows on it! A key desire of mine was to use Boot Camp for the speed of running Windows natively, but also to use VM software to access that same Boot Camp partition on the hard drive from within Mac OS X. I thought only VMWare’s Fusion (now available as a Release Candidate — GA in August) would support that, but after listening to Hanselminutes #67 (”Hanselminutae-four”) I found out that Parallels–the current “industry standard”–does indeed support it.

So I ask you — which is better? Parallels or Fusion? I’ve installed them both, run them both, and here’s my current pro/con list:

So far Parallels is on top, but I know I’m not considering all the facts. What do you think? Have any advice, or anything for me to add to the pros/cons list? I’ll update the table based on comments. Thanks!