VMWare Fusion vs. Parallels vs. QEMU

This week, in between classes, I have been experimenting with virtual machines. Why, you may ask? Because I have been going through old-school gaming withdrawals, and because I need to teach Office 2007 classes. Both require a Windows environment of some sort, and so my quest began.

I started with DOSBox, which I still think is the best DOS emulator I have been able to find for the Mac. It's open source (huge plus!), and works well with most of my DOS games without any configuration. Primarily I used it for Martian Dreams, which I managed to finish in a relatively painless manner. And, interestingly enough, it will run Windows 3.11 rather well (sans networking). For gaming, there isn't anything better. It also runs Word 6.0 without a hitch, in the DOS environment. Not that I would use it for writing anything serious, you understand. Rather I use it for background refreshers.

But, like with all great things that are developed in Open Source, DOSBox is limited. Technically it's possible to install Windows 95, but I want something a bit more stable. Unfortunately, on my personal machine, I'm running a PowerPC. That limits my choices considerably for what is out there.

Of course my work machine is a Mac Pro, and rather well put together. I installed Parallels on it at first, just to play around with it. It worked just the way Windows XP is expected to work: Slow and clunky. But it worked well, and I could get my networks setup, my access taken care of, and work with Office 2007. So I was happy, and this was all before VMWare came out with Fusion.

Now, when VMWare announced Fusion, I was immediately defensive of Parallels. Sure, Parallels initially kernel-panicked my machine, but that was all in the past! I got it working, and it did the job for me. I didn't think I would ever work with VMWare.

Then Leopard came out, and the game changed. I had Parallels 2.x, and it didn't work in Leopard. I had to purchase 3.x. You can probably imagine my excitement over that. So, I went with Bootcamp for a while (tri-booting my Mac Pro), and hobbled along.

Recently (as in this week), my IT department told me they purchased VMWare for me a month ago, and just never told me (or anyone else they had purchased it for) that it was available. I snatched it from their hands, got the CD Key, and then downloaded the latest version. Within a half an hour, I not only had VMWare installed, but also XP! So here is my experience with VMWare Fusion vs. Parallels:

VMWare	Parallels
Installation was quick and painless, though my experience with Parallels told me to download the latest version of the emulator, and not use the included CD. It is rumored that there is an automatic update tool built into the installation.	First installation crashed my system, requiring a reboot. After reading the boards, I learned that everyone else that had an Intel Core 2 Duo processor had the same problem and ranked the program as poor. A download of the latest version of 2.x worked well, and the installation took the expected amount of time
Configuration was really painless. It automatically detected my Bootcamp partition, but even better it had an automated installation for the Windows OS that was clean and easy. It allowed installation from a Disk Image of the install CD, which made it that much more convenient to install the OS.	Parallels really understood the meaning of Wizards when they came up with their install process, blazing the path for VMWare to follow on the Mac OS. The installation could have been automated, but I preferred to do a basic install. As of 2.x I was unaware of an option to install from a disk image, and I couldn't tell you if that option is in 3.x
VMWare's performance is where it excels. The boot sequence is faster than I have seen anywhere, and as such it does a remarkable job. Connecting and disconnecting peripherals is a breeze, and subsequent configurations are simple.	Parallels had some performance issues that I didn't notice until I installed VMWare. Perhaps it is because it was 2.x and not 3.x, but it was noticeably slower when booting to Windows. Other than that, the performance was not noticeably any different. The one thing that was a problem for me on Parallels was the USB jump drive. It had trouble detecting it, because Mac detected it first. I would unmount it on the Mac, and then try to mount it in Parallels, and it would still fail. That was annoying.

All in all, it was a good experience, and both get the job done. It just seems that VMWare Fusion manages to make it more fluid. And as the price tag for both is the same, I'm convinced that VMWare is the better choice for me.

But I also mentioned that I would talk about QEMU, or Q for the Mac. This is an open source emulator that not only allows you to install Windows, but you can emulate other processor types as well. Need a Sparc machine? It's there. Need to run something for an ARM processor? It's waiting for you. The only problem is, it's terribly slow. The huge bonus is, it's the only way (short of purchasing Virtual PC) to have Windows installed on the Mac PowerPC.

The specs that it emulates to is really impressive. In fact, I should be able to run a couple of Windows games on it without any trouble, and as it's all about the old-school games, it should be a problem to run them on my Powerbook.

So, what's the final verdict? VMWare wins for me on the Intel machine, and QEMU is the clear winner for the PowerPC. Parallels is a close second to VMWare, and both beat QEMU on the Intel machine (for now, anyway).

Parallel's Desktop For Mac: The Review

With the arrival of my wife's iMac, I finally had the opportunity to try Parallel's Desktop for Mac. I wrote about this program earlier, and the excitement that I had in anticipation of it's implementation. It promised a lot that I felt was almost too good to be true, particularly when I read the reviews by other Mac users. Here is the experience that I had.

Why I Needed It
I haven't been very subtle about my love of the Mac, and it's ability to run both open source programs and professionally developed programs well. It's a wonderful setup overall. That being said, there are some few applications that my wife uses that requires Windows. While we have tried everything we can think of to try and work around it, one application in specific did not allow us to move from Windows completely to the Mac. So, instead of filling up our office space with occasionally used Windows machines, we would rather have a virtual machine that will take care of all the nasty Windows applications, while still being within the Macintosh. And, it would let me install Linux and Solaris on it as well, without having to reboot the system. That was a major bonus.

The Install
The install ran fluidly, as with any other native Carbon or Cocoa application. It did need to add some extensions, but overall it ran perfectly. And, as is characteristic of all UNIX-based Operating Systems, it didn't require a reboot of the system (yes, one of the main reasons I left Windows). Once set up, it gives the main program, and the Virtual Machine creator.

Starting it up
Starting it up was a bit different. It began with the Virtual Machine creator, because there wasn't one set up by default. I began by selecting Windows XP defaults, as I intended to install Windows Vista as the Windows machine. I continued through the process, and finally got to the point where I could boot to Windows. I changed the boot sequence, and double-checked the resources being allocated. It gave 8GB of hard drive space to the VM, and 256MB of RAM. Considering the iMac has 2 GB or RAM and a 250GB hard drive, I didn't think this would cause a problem. Then, I entered in my Windows Vista RC 1 disk, wrote down the Product Key, and started the Virtual Machine....

I got a Kernel Panic... I've never had a kernel panic before on a Mac, and was shocked! How could this happen? The resources are well below what Mac OS X Tiger requires to run... Why the Kernel Panic?!? I tried it again, with the same result. Well, time to check the manuals.

Yes, I admit I don't read manuals for a software install. They are all so basic that I have very rarely needed to do anything fancy. Well, this time I checked the process, and made sure everything was exactly as the Manuals suggested. I tweaked a couple of settings, crossed my fingers, and tried again...to the same result. Same Kernel Panic, and needed to reboot the Mac.

By now I was getting pretty steamed. I began to understand the frustration that the reviewers had for the program. As I started to contemplate it's fate (and a possible waste of $80.00), I decided to check out their website to see if they have at least acknowledged the issue. As I started checking things out, it seems that they were not only aware of the issue, but released an update that fixed it! This cooled my temper a bit, and I started the 30MB download. After a short couple of minutes, I started the install and update. Once that was done, I started up the virtual machine...and it booted! It started to try to load Windows VIsta. I say try, because Windows Vista didn't like the BIOS on the iMac, and refused to load. Well, that's fine. The program worked, and that's the main point.

While I tried to remember the location of my old copies of Windows, I gave another Operating System a try. I grabbed xubuntu 6.0.1, and threw it in. I kept the Windows XP settings, and ran the Live Update on the computer. Everything booted like a charm. It did run rather slow, but keep in mind it was a Virtual Machine running off of a CD in another Virtural Machine. It was bound to be somewhat sluggish to say the least. But it worked brilliantly, and I was more excited then ever.

The Conclusion
So the final grade? I would give it an overall B. Yes, it didn't work out of the box, but once I got it to work, it began to hum like a dream. While I would have liked it to run swimmingly at the get-go, I'm glad that it didn't. It gave me a chance to troubleshoot the program, and get to know it better. Afterall, it took me 3 Linux installs before I finally got to the point of using it regularly. And that lead me to Mac OS X, which is my Operating System of choice. This program now gives me the option of not only remaining on the Mac, but utilizing the sttrengths of other Operating Systems, and on the same machine. I'm looking forward to my next Mac purchase (a Macbook Pro), so that I can install all my old Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22 games, and have a real fun party! ^_^