Switch to VMWare?

this is a question to all dcc-people.
i'm one of these users who are just tired of not being able to launch my 3d apps anymore (when it ran fine under 2.5). i bought v3.0 because of the promises parallels made in terms of it being faster and better for 3d, but none of it is the case and the opengl doesn't seem to work at all and apps like maya, 3dsmax (and so many more) don't even start up anymore.

i was really disappointed to discover this after i gave parallels my money but now my patience is over (since they didn't seem to adress this issue with the 4128 release).

and i'm curious if any dcc-people did try latest vmware beta? is it recommended over parallels 2.5 in terms of 3d/ open-gl performance?

any suggestions and impressions welcome,
thanks

 

I have not tried it, there seems to be several threads debating the various pro's and con's. Just do not mention price or benchmarks, or the post will be pulled. Other than that find the threads and enjoy.

 

It would probably be a better idea to wander over to the VMWare forums and ask the same questions there.

Personally, I don't play games in Paralles or VMWare, and I've generally had not a lot of problems with Parallels through all the 2.x betas, and now up to 3. But I've been testing Fusion just because lots of people talk about better performance with it. And while I much prefer a number of things with Fusion, there are some gotchas that are driving me back to Parallels, like how Fusion handles keyboard events is particularly problematic for me.

Personally, I'd say try out the Fusion beta, its free after all, and get a feel for if it'll work better for you or not.

 

If you really need 3D you are far ahead using Boot Camp than either Parallels or VMWare. No exceptions. No software solution yet exists that can assure you of 100% support in a virtual machine. Some folks, myself included, require only a subset of 3D capability and for me Parallels and Fusion both work fine as is.

 

sure and i use bootcamp from time to time when it gets heavy. but most of the time it's good enough if not almost on par with the native performance.

but since pd3.0 it just got worse. this is disappointing and shouldn't happen when they promised better performance & 3d acceleration. now my 3d apps dont even start up anymore. and i'm really not motivated to re-install 2.5 when i paid for 3.0 and expect it to work as advertised.

 

I can't use Boot Camp. Thus for some people like me, that's essential for Parallels and Fusion to keep continuing to develop their 3D technology.

 

Yep - that's not happening today, though, unfortunately. And in your case this is more than just an inconvenience. And with MSFT pushing DirectX 10 in Vista (to help encourage Vista sales, no doubt) things can only get more... interesting, shall we say . I really don't know how, with emulation, they can support very advanced graphics with just two processor cores. At least at gaming frame rates. Time will tell, but for those who can use it, Boot Camp is still the champ for overall Windows support.

 

However, Dennis just ten years ago people were saying to me unfortunately it's impossible to make a unfreezable computer. Now with OSX I can't remember when my fairy new iMac froze on me even.

So I learned never to say never when it comes to computer technology. Nobody can predict what kind of new technologies they will discover.

I'll bet that eventually that 3D technology in a VM will become almost as good as the real thing. I have no doubt of it, just you watch.

 

I spent this weekend installing it and building up a fresh development VM. I plan to give it a week and see how it goes.

I don't care about gaming, so that won't play into my evaluation at all - I am soley looking at stability. If I run a full week without getting the "sudden shutdown syndrome" during VS.NET 2005 debugging, I will be sold. What matters to me in terms of features are the 3 S's - Stability, Speed, and Security.

One thing worth noting - there -is- a procedure for converting a Parallels VM to VMWare, but it's not the most optimal way to go. That yields an IDE-compatible virtual disk, while going from scratch yields a SCSI-compatible one that performs better. So that's the route I took.

 

I have made the switch til parallels cleans up their act and put out something with less bugs

 

If you avoid Boot Camp, Windows games, and applications that require enhanced video support, and some USB devices, Parallels works very well. I have never had an operational problem with Parallels since I've begun using it. It's been a brick. But 3.0 introduced some security problems that I consider serious enough that I've uninstalled it until the fix is provided. I bought 3 upgrades to 3.0 so I'm looking forward to using them.

 

I agree with you totally. 3.0 it too buggy for me and thats I dont play any games on it. I will tell you fusion offer pretty good support for Ubuntu 7.04

 

I wish I could say the same. I've had an ongoing crash while doing VS.NET 2005 ASP.NET debugging for months. I've seen other people post the same problem, as well.

I know software takes time to get right, so I've been patient with it, but it makes me very nervous - sooner or later one of those sudden shutdowns will bork the VM file and corrupt my workspace.

I was really disappointed that 3.0 didn't fix that - that was THE feature I upgraded for. Like I said gaming in a VM doesn't make sense to me, and I don't like the new features like SmartSelect.

That being said, Parallels has been the killer app for Intel Macs for some time. I'll certainly continue to try subsequent builds.

And if VMWare doesn't turn out to be stable, well, they're out too. The one that adheres to the 3 S's is the one I will stick with long term.

 

I've been comparing Fusion with parallels myself and so far, it seems that Fusion is nudging out parallels on stability. The really sad/disappointing aspect is that fusion is still beta and this is more stable then parallels which is now 3 versions old. To be fair, I've not tried 3.0 and I've been comparing 2.5 with fusion. Even so Fusion is much more stable.

Over all I've not been hugely disappointed with parallels except for its stability. I've had it crash on me too many times, it even caused my mac to reboot - that never happened before.

I'm still comparing but producing a stable VM is much more important to me then throwing in new features left and right.

 

i agree with you macosnerd. today i went on to go through the hassle to test/ compare latest fusion beta and i must say i'm rather impressed and will be using it until it expires and final version releases. and until maybe parallels get's their shit together and materializes their promises into reality.

overall performance seems better, the 3d acceleration actually works and the 3d apps start too.

and one very important aspect: even after i run it for hours and hours and intense stuff, both os'es are still fluid & very responsive, almost as if they were running alone.

with parallels i could only work until a certain amount of time until i had to quit everything and restart. this meant restarting like every 30mins sometimes, which is of course very very annoying. and by restarting i dont mean windows inside the vm, but the entire system.

tomorrow i'll be starting to think about parallels refund if possible, i'm really unhappy with this situation. but happy to have vmware as alternative.

 

Way to go SCSI with Fusion from Parallels

There actually IS a way to load a Parallels VM into a SCSI virtual disk in Fusion, although it is a bit of a pain. To try and get a customized XP install, via nLite, to load into Fusion, I had to use the non-Easy Install method, which limits you to an IDE drive. From there, I used XP's Backup program to backup my VM. I then created a XP VM using Easy Install, and using backup in there, restored my other VM to that one. Presto, IDE -> SCSI conversion.

It should be a simple matter to do an Backup in Parallels and restore it under Fusion. And if you can't go directly from Parallels to Fusion w/SCSI, then there you could always convert Parallels first, and then do the backup route.

Yeah, a BIG pain. But depending on how much customization you've done, it might be worth it.

 

Perhaps you overlooked the VMware Fusion migration tutorial on VMware's forums?
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=88195&tstart=25

This method works fine with VM's and Bare Metal, as long as you change the SID of the machine cloned, and re-activate Windows.

Let me go on the record stating that I feel Parallels is being a bit of a control freak with their disk format. VMware's is fully open, allowing backwards and forward migration, while Parallels has no method to natively convert VM's back. On top of that, the new split disk option in 3.0 is weak when converting over competitor VM's. I keep a template XP VM handy in VMware format because of Parallels' proprietary disk format. I prefer Parallels as it is better integrated with Mac OS X, but I prefer VMware's compatibility and long proven company image over Parallels, who obviously has some schooling to do with regards to support. I also noticed that between releases Parallels introduces some odd and painful bugs, so with that said I've paid for both, but prefer VMware, unless there's some feature Parallels does that I absolutely need, I will continue to flip flop between them until one or the other becomes so unbearable I have no choice but to fully embrace the less kludged solution.

Parallels needs to allow backwards migration, I don't care what the excuse, VMware and even Microsoft's formats can be transferred both ways with their own utilities.

 

You might want to take a look more closely at your VS2005 development environment.

I use mine 3 days out of 5 in my Parallel 3 VM and have not had any issues while debugging.

 

I would agree with fbronner...I use 3.0 with VS2005 daily for work without any issues...

 

Well, it's just a default install, nothing funky or magic about it. VS SP1 installed.

I got the crash at least once every single day. But, not since the VMWare switch.

I wonder, have you guys that report no problems ever run Parallels Compressor?