“And boy, am I glad I did. Parallels 5 now is a much better product. In its ongoing game of leapfrog with VMware, Parallels has taken the lead,” Silverman reports.
“In terms of speed, with Aero enabled, Parallels is noticeably faster than Fusion in all its various modes — in a window, full screen, Coherence (in which Windows programs float free on the Mac desktop) and a hybrid mode called Crystal. Even on my iMac, which uses an older ATI Radeon 2600 HD graphics processor, Coherence running Aero is a remarkably smoother experience than VMware Fusion’s similar Unity mode,” Silverman reports. “VMware released its own update recently that improves its Unity/Aero performance in Fusion 3, but Parallels 5 still runs circles around it.”
Silverman reports, “At this point, if I am asked whether I prefer VMware Fusion 3 or Parallels 5 for running Windows on your Mac, I’d have to recommend the latter. But stay tuned. The way this competition is shaping up, that could change with the next updated build.”
Full review here.
