Are you a Parallels Desktop 5 user eager to jump to VMware Fusion? Or were you too cheap to move from Fusion version 1 or 2? Well now’s your big chance to upgrade from either product to a full VMware Fusion 3 license for under ten bucks!
I love VirtualBox, but spend most of my Mac OS X “Windows time” in VMware Fusion. I often have to jump to “the dark side” to run Visio or Outlook, and love the built-in speech-to-text feature in Vista and Windows 7. VMware Fusion has excellent Windows support and integration, especially when it comes to USB devices. I can easily switch my Blue Snowball microphone from OS X to Fusion on the fly with Fusion 3.1’s “EasyConnect”, and I wouldn’t have been able to update my Sony NEX-5 camera firmware without solid USB support.
Fusion 3 has lots of great features, including full Snow Leopard support, great 3D graphics capability, and SMP support. Performance has improved consistently from earlier versions as well, and I notice much less of a “hit” on my Mac performance while running Windows in Fusion 3.1. It also supports some of my favorite Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 10.04 in 64-bit mode.
[exp]The upgrade offer requires ownership of any version of Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion and lasts through December 31, 2010.[/exp]
So why VMWare Fusion over VirtualBox? You’ve said good things about each, but which is nicer for the occasional use? Which do you think is easier to start a novice on?