Parallels 7 versus Fusion5 first impressions

Some of you may find this interesting. If you have followed any of my other posts you will know by now that I have been less than impressed with the Mountain Lion PD6 debacle and am currently using Virtualbox in protest.

However, as my trial of PD7 was still current (used it to so I could convert to VB without incident) I thought I would download the brand new version of VMware - Fusion5 in order to make a comparison (Windows 7 VM using 1 processor and 2gig of RAM). The results were not quite what I expected. Fusion5 is much slower to boot than PD7, took exactly twice as long and only a little faster than VB which is "free". I also had a few instances of spinning beach ball whilst the programme was active and this is on a 2011 iMac i5 with 8 gig of RAM. Overall Parallels is a smoother experience, though F5 did perform OK once the VM had booted. To be honest VB is hard to fault, especially given it is free.

Overall then, although hardly scientific I would put Parallels down as the clear winner.