Parallels vs VMware Fusion speed

Question

I’m running a intel based MacBook Pro: 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 32 GB. I’m using VMware Fusion. I find some pretty slow lag times between double clicks. 3 seconds x 700 clicks = 35 minutes of waiting per day.

Have you found Parallels to run faster than VMware Fusion? 2-3 hours a week of times savings would be worth the switch.

Answer 1

@Clear7419 Thanks for sharing your experience. It does seem like Parallels is a superior product. Hopefully other users won’t have the same issue though, as VMWare Fusion offers a free license for non-commercial use.

Comments

I’ve not used vmWare Fusion much recently, but I can tell you a bit more about Parallels Desktop:

You have two licensing options:
$80 for “Standard Edition” which does not expire, or
$100 for “Pro Edition” for a license which will expire in 1 year, but can be renewed for $50 for another year.

Parallels releases an upgrade for Parallels every year sometime in August. “Pro Edition” receives this upgrade free/automatically. For “Standard Edition”, one must bay $50. In past years they allowed free upgrades for anyone who purchased the older version anytime in August or September.

If you upgrade to the newer version every year, then the costs end up being about the same. In my opinion, none of the additional features of the Pro Edition would benefit the typical Paratext user. But if your Mac has 32GB of RAM, maybe you’d want the Pro Edition so that you can allocate more than 8GB of RAM to the Windows VM.

I buy the “Standard Edition” for $80, and then skip upgrade years when the upgrade doesn’t seem compelling. If I skip an upgrade for one year, then I’ve halved my annual cost for Parallels. You can get the Parallels Upgrade price if you own ANY previous version, so waiting a year or two to upgrade is not an issue. You may, however, have compatibility issues with newer versions of macOS or Windows and older versions of Parallels.

Another plus for Parallels is that their support is very responsive. About 2 years ago a Parallels Desktop update broke Paratext, but Parallels was very quick to acknowledge the bug, offer a work-around which we could apply immediately, and then fix the bug permanently in an update.

Does Paratext’s telemetry tell how many users are running Paratext in VMs on Macs?

Answer 2

Well, I downloaded a trial version of parallels and it was substantially faster. Sold.