Parallels vs Fusion reloaded

[Stefdar]

The latest Parallels version 5160 is not only very very fast, but very very stable and uses much less resources than Fusion, while doing a thousand things more.

Compared to Parallels the graphics of Fusion are 1/3 of the speed in any condition.

Coherence in 5160 offers all the eye-candy, plus it's at least 3 times faster and less buggy that Unity.

For the first time, Parallels beats Fusion in CPU tests. Amazing. And don't listen about the 2 CPUs for Fusion, it actually makes it even more slow.
UI and graphics, it's not comparable.
CPU strain: Parallels 5160 idles at 4 to 5 %, Fusion at 9-10.
Memory: Again under the same configuration Parallels is less resource hungry and more optimized.
Network: In my domain when I try to copy a file to or from my network, it takes Parallels 4 times less to copy.

What can I say. The latest Parallels is the first one that has everything, is reliable and fast, and it kills the competition hands down. As for the latest Fusion DX9 enabled beta, it is so slow it reminds me of VirtualPC on my G5 the old days.

Congrats Parallels, keep up the good work.

 

[MarkHolbrook]

5160 is fast and seems stable. But the coherence feature, granted its a feature, is broken beyond belief in this release. Clicking on Windows doesn't bring them to the foreground.

The other minor annoyance in 5160 is the smartselect, shared profile thing. Many people on the forum are battling with this "features".

If Parallels took the 5160 code base, fixed the coherence bring to front problem and provided a way to completely disable smart select and shared profiles and called it 5170 (or whatever) then they would have everything in one build.

I still use Parallels over Fusion (but I bought fusion to support their cause). Competition is healthy.

M

 

[DerekS]

I switched away from Parallels to Fusion shortly after Parallels 3.0 came out due to stability, speed and security. I've been happy with Fusion.

I will admit though, this thread had me almost ready to try Parallels again until I read this:

If Parallels took the 5160 code base, fixed the coherence bring to front problem and provided a way to completely disable smart select and shared profiles and called it 5170 (or whatever) then they would have everything in one build.

Does this mean that the "smart" select still can't be disabled? I thought they were going to address that.

 

[MarkHolbrook]

They claim it can be disabled with the checkbox but in my experience once they have futzed with your associations you are messed up.

I still have to manually open many many OS X apps because if I double click on the doc it will try to run parallels. It is an annoyance rather than a serious bug.

M

 

[BenInBlack]

There is one other issue and that is some kinda leak or rogue process in Parallel Tools which causes Parallels to slow down and crash eventually. It doesnt take long on my mac mini with 2gig to Crash, I have an associate that has a Mac Pro with 8 gig and his run longer till it dies, but it will die.

Though I'm not willing to jump ship on Parallels. I went back to build 4560 and will wait it out.

I hope we here some word from them on these issues soon.

 

[brkirch]

There is one other issue and that is some kinda leak or rogue process in Parallel Tools which causes Parallels to slow down and crash eventually. It doesnt take long on my mac mini with 2gig to Crash, I have an associate that has a Mac Pro with 8 gig and his run longer till it dies, but it will die.

I haven't seen much about this issue. Does the memory leak in Parallels Tools always occur for you (even when Windows is completely idle) or does it only happen if certain programs are running? It could somehow be related to the DirectX dlls Parallels Tools installs, someone else claims that dlls that Parallels Tools installs are responsible, I'm just guessing they are the DirectX ones.

I hope we here some word from them on these issues soon.

Occasionally the Parallels team seems to disappear from these forums, but usually they start posting again immediately after a new release. Usually a new Parallels Desktop release is out about every two-three weeks, so you should probably get a response from them on this problem soon since based on the fact that there will likely be another beta of Parallels Desktop released soon.

 

[biglar]

I am using 5160 on my imac 2gb with windows xp and don't have coherence problems, memory leak, or smartselect problems. Maybe this occurs on just some specific configurations??

 

[Leonard]

the coherence feature, granted its a feature, is broken beyond belief in this release. Clicking on Windows doesn't bring them to the foreground.

I only use a couple of Windows apps, but they come right to the foreground as I expect when I click any of their application windows. :::shrug::: Is there a failcase I can try? FWIW, I also did not have any special Coherence problems during any of the beta builds either.

 

[biglar]

I tried messing around with windows in coherence. It seems if I am showing the windows task bar, the windows applications will not behave properly and come to the foreground each time (they do sometimes), but if I disable the task bar all works ok.

I did not have any problems before because I was not showing the task bar. Anyone else see this ??

 

[BenInBlack]

I haven't seen much about this issue. Does the memory leak in Parallels Tools always occur for you (even when Windows is completely idle) or does it only happen if certain programs are running? It could somehow be related to the DirectX dlls Parallels Tools installs, someone else claims that dlls that Parallels Tools installs are responsible, I'm just guessing they are the DirectX ones.

I think this has more to do with the smart select file associations, let me explain, when i upgraded to 4560 (while back) and smart select was defaulted on and it setup associations, and i had minor glitches, and so turned off what i could, but those associations remained, so when I upgraded to 5160 I had a bunch of 4560 associations. this made for some interesting crashes. I downgraded and thanks to your script, repaired the associations. over the weekend (I decided to see if my hypothesis was correct) I upgraded again to 5160 with all turned off and security set to high and no rogue associations and this install went in and I havent seen any crashing (knock on wood)

Occasionally the Parallels team seems to disappear from these forums, but usually they start posting again immediately after a new release. Usually a new Parallels Desktop release is out about every two-three weeks, so you should probably get a response from them on this problem soon since based on the fact that there will likely be another beta of Parallels Desktop released soon.

Well I requested to get back on Beta team to contribute, but this lack of response for a clear issue was kinda disconcerting