Who will convert to VMware Fusion when it is released?

Looking at the forums, SVISTA has been superceded by Parallels Workstation - SVISTA wasn't abandoned, per se, but continues on as PW. So it's not exactly 'dump and run' as you claim. The company is still here, and the product, albeit under different name and a bit different goals, is still around.

I do agree that the feedback / support from the official team is pretty horrible - I myself had crashes with ActiveX controls that blocks keyloggers that Parallels never bothered to comment on or fix despite my numerous bug report filings on it... which goes ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING of Parallels' first Mac release. Oh, it still crashes. I heard VMware Fusion doesn't crash with them, though. Lucky for me, though, the makers of the said ActiveX controls issued workarounds that 'fixes' the problem by temporarily disabling the keylogger blocking capability as I needed. Still, I can pretty much say the state of Parallels tech support has been like this for an entire year. Now THAT'S CONSISTENT. Ha.

Except for that, though, Parallels has been able to deliver and keep improving the product very actively, which I think highly of. I can't say how this forum will look like next year, but I have a pretty good feeling the talk will continue.

 

Fusion is too buggy to be usable for me right now. I want to do my work. I don't want to deal with bugs. Parallels - 98% of the time has no bugs that I encounter That's good enough for me!

 

Could not agree more. Great point DKP. I use both currently and it is always nice to see the differences. I have to say if you take coherence out of it, VMWare wins hands down.

 

Right from the early Betas , Parallels has always worked very well for me . I have tried VMWare previously on my PC and it worked pretty well too . It has to be said that the cost of Parallels is far less than that of VMWare was ( when I last had to buy it ) . I know that they did the free 'player' versions which only play ready created virtual machines but they are of no use to me , if ( and only if ) they were to give away a ( not too ) feature limited 'full' version I might consider switching , but not until then .

The other thing I found with VMWare was that each upgrade to the program was an expensive one . Nearly full price .

I don't know about you , but I have emailed or posted messages on forums for a few other products ( including one which worked well until I paid for and registered it - then never worked again ) and it is very rare to get a response . Anyone here tried complaining to Microsoft ? Most software companies seem to rely on you fixing your own problems , and then letting other users know how you did it . I don't think Parallels are any better or worse than any others .

I'm sticking with Parallels .

 

On PC and Linux, VMWare make their money from Workstation, which has lots of developer-friendly features and the enterprise-strength server virtualization stuff. Giving Player and the basic Server away is probably a good loss leader.

Not sure if that model works for Macs - even if VMWare or Parallels does a deal with Apple to allow virtualization of OSX (which makes developer work a bit of a no-no) you don't have the hoards of corporate in-house programmers found in the PC market. I'd also wager that XServes are predominently used as high-performance filestores and render engines - not the prime market for server virtualization.

So I'd guess that VMWare will be looking to make money selling Windows compatibility to switchers. If I'm wrong, well, actually, I could really use a free player for virtual appliances right now.

 

Their entry-level server product, which can create VMs, is free, too - not much good for desktop stuff, but fine for creating "virtual appliances" and stuff. See other post for why I don't think they'll do this for Mac.

Agree about the updates - I'm still using Workstation N-2 or so because it does everything I need.

 

This isn't the forum to be going on and on about Fusion, but Fusion is not like other VMWare products in that it is targeted to end users, not the datacenter, so it will not be as feature rich as it's older siblings. And it will have to compete in the arena they've chosen and the arena master now is Parallels. It will require compelling new, or superior features vs PDM to justify breaking the $99 barrier. They are very deep in the value-added market with the ready-to-run appliances, and they can now migrate PDM VM's into their hypervisor, but that's fluff - very good fluff, though. It's a niche GFBurke is fulfilling for PDM, but in the long term there needs to be a revenue stream for when the enthusiam becomes drudgery.

No matter what happens it's going to be good for the consumer, and assuming we don't kill off Parallels and VMWare, or disincent them from continuing, it will be good for Apple, too.

The big winner? As always, Microsoft. The hidden VM tax (well, not so hidden). They have no skin in the development game and everthing to win. If it fails, it's not their fault.

 

Convert Parallels images to VMWare?

So, are there any tools to convert the Parallels images to VMWare?

 

1. I think this merits a separate thread, if not already asked before - no need to hijack.
2. Even better, the question seems better suited for VMware Fusion discussion board.

 

Yes. The details are available on their Fusion forums for registered Beta testers.

 

1 for VMWare

After losing my system to the dreaded BootCamp + Parallels + Crash = Kernel Panic and no more OSX issue (that's the only way I can describe it), I am 100% behind VMWare now. I'm not having that happen again, it was hell getting my laptop up and running again.

 

I purchased a Linux and Mac copy of Parallels and used them about 3 or 4 months. I then ran into strange issues trying to upgrade software within the Mac virtual machine(Windows guest). So I attempted to try from scratch with a brand new Windows install. The installation of Windows failed once and then succeeded. I then attempted to get Windows all patched up. SP2 applied but when I attempted to patch the system after SP2 was installed I ended up with a blue screening system. This was a fresh install of Windows. On the Linux copy I had, USB devices never worked within the Windows guest. With all those experiences I decided to give Fusion a try. I also ditched my Linux copy and went back to VMware on Linux.
Fusion is a beta product and has debugging enabled but I've found it to be a rock solid product for me with speed very acceptable. The speed should get even better once debugging is turned off. I have a MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM. I removed my Parallels session about a month ago and haven't looked back. I'm glad others are having good experiences with Parallels because competition is needed. I may try Parallels again in the future but not until I see fewer major problems showing up in the forums.

 

Parallels may have killed my Mac

Right now Parallels won't load, won't quit, won't force quit and won't allow my Mac to shutdown with out a power off. This happened when I tried to import some Win98se VMs from VPC 2004. So until I find out how to get a working copy of Parallels working on my Mac again with out reformatting the HD, reinstalling OSX and Parallels, Fusion is the only choice.

 

dlundh

We are deeply sorry, that you could not get appropriate help. Even if you specifically havn't felt it - our Support Team does everything in it's power to answer as much as they can.Unfortunatly, perhaps you just got unlucky on getting our engineer online.Please believe, that we do work on QoS for Support Team.

Could you be so kind and report your problem here? We would appreciate if you could provide us with Tickets IDs you have for your problems.

 

Comme on... Give us a break. You do know as well as we that this is not so.... Unless you have one or two guys at it

 

None of this means anything until VMWare comes out of beta with pricing

Many people might say they are going to switch, but until we know what the price is going to be, I hardly think those are serious claims.

IF VMWare comes in at $150 they will find a lot fewer switchers... but they might get more new customers, given the utter lack of support of Parallels evident thus far on this group and VMWare's excellent reputation for support.

VMWare's cost for switchers starts at $40 (for early adopters) or $80 PLUS the cost of VMWare.

IF VMWare comes in near Parallels price (i.e. $99 or less) they'll probably find a bigger crowd.

If they match Parallels price, I think Parallels future is dire.

Right now I'm using Parallels because a) I've already paid for it and b) I like the fact that I can use BootCamp for it and (AFAICT) you can't use BootCamp with VMWare.

Parallels support (or lack thereof) might kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

 

Fair comments. It's possible VMWare (if their marketing department is as smart as their software engineering one appears to be) could offer a crossgrade offer or, like Parallels, offer a pre-release offer. Time will tell I guess.

 

Depends on support for my Clie.

Since the most important function I need is Palm USB Hotsync support for my Clie, and since hotsync is hit-or-miss on Parallels (and that's an IMPROVEMENT over not working at all) and reliable on VMWare... I guess it depends on whether they can get it together and make USB work reliably.

 

OSX 10.4.9 helped

After installing the OSX 10.4.9 upgrade, I can use Parallels again.

 

Parallels support.
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