Link via Macworld
I’ve reviewed many generations of Parallels and Fusion, so I’ve seen them develop. The advances they’ve made have been amazing. The two developers have pushed each other hard, and their products have leap-frogged each other to introduce new features and improve performance, resulting in two excellent alternatives. Running the current generations of these two virtualization programs—Parallels 8 Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion 5 —on one of today’s ultra-fast Macs, only the most hardcore Windows users will feel the need to reboot into Boot Camp to run Windows natively.
Another result of this competition is that the two programs have evolved into near twins of each other. They offer similar features, similar performance, and at times, even look similar. There are a few differences, though, and that’s what I focused on in assessing the latest versions of each.
Parallels Desktop 8 is available at an academic discount price of $39.99
VMware Fusion 5 is available at a price of $49.95
VMware Fusion 5 Pro is available at an academic discount price of $54.95
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