I’m considering binning Bootcamp in favour of Parallels. Your thoughts please.
I use VMWare fusion V10 and have done for at least 10 years from version 1.0 around 2007 ish. I really like the ability to run Windows in a VM, as it runs Windows like another program & I feel there is much more control - I use XP & W7 . I think Ive only had to do a restore of the VM from a snapshot once and it recovered flawlessly from a fail to boot from BSOD. There is also a degree of portability because the entire VM can be copied to a pen drive and run from another machine with VM Fusion. Files can also be accessed on the Mac if desired as I keep my database in an encrypted vault on the Mac, which once opened I use Access under Windows.
I don’t know Parallels, but Ive been very happy with Fusion and with 6 cores and 32Gb of ram I have plenty of resources so the VM runs very quickly. Unreal Tournament runs very well on XP too!
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Parallels is ok, I use it, but really it’s advantage over Bootcamp is the ability to run OSX and Windows side by side and pass data between the two.
Bootcamp is quicker as effectively your Mac hardware is run as either a Windows PC or Mac… and offers the best performance.
On my iMac I only run not too demanding Windows apps, so Parallels is fine… I suspect if the apps were more demanding it would be less attractive.
I looked at Vmware but it wont run on my mac mini. A pity as they offer a free home use licence. No support from either for an M1 mac at the moment.
Using a Mid 2010 core 2 duo mac mini, 8GB ram, 500GB SSD. Osx High Sierra, Windows 7 Home Premium.
I have Parallels installed at the moment, seems ok so far, easy to use, no faffing around rebooting and the drag n drop between apps is good and really intuitive. No problems there.
I only recently changed over to Apple so theres a few things on Windows that I’ll likely find useful.
As per my original post, this all started because I couldn’t find drivers for my printer but this works OK with Parallels and Bootcamp.
I have a few choices, buy a new printer, run bootcamp or run Parallels.
Don’t really need a new printer the one I have is fine.
Run Bootcamp, it works Ok but is a bit of a faff at times.
Run Parallels which seems to do everything I need.
Parallels costs but so does a new printer so that balances out.
Bootcamp is free, it’s biggest plus point for me.
Day 2 of a 14 day trial but Parallels is looking good at the mo.
If I keep it I will go for the lifetime licence but with that there are no upgrades but seeing as I can’t upgrade OSX I don’t see that as an issue.
I moved from Windows to Mac back in 2008 and purchased a Parallels licence so I could continue to run an old version of Dreamweaver. However it soon became apparent that Parallels has a big problem, the pop up ads. Yes there is a ‘do not show this again’ box to tick but that only applies to that specific advert not the next one. From the comments so far on here I had assumed that they had finally mended their ways but it seems not.
See here https://forum.parallels.com/threads/parallels-pro-edition-bombarding-adverts.346640/
& here (this thread contains a screenshot of a typical ad) https://forum.parallels.com/threads/parallels-pro-edition-bombarding-adverts.346640/
If you find pop up adverts on a paid for product acceptable then you will be fine, if like me you hate them then you will very quickly regret buying Parallels. I deleted my copy after a few months and bought a cheap old small Dell desktop to run Dreamweaver, booting it a once a week inorder to update a website was hardly an inconvenience. I still use Apple Macs and do my best to avoid anything Microsoft but occasionally fail, like yesterday when I was ‘volunteered’ to set up a new Windows laptop - ‘Mike’s an IT engineer he will do it’, I did, reluctantly.
Mike
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Thats blown that out of the water. Back to Bootcamp I think.
This and other ads …
Individual notifications can be turned off by clicking the “don’t show this again” button. However, because customers need to receive important product information, there is not a mechanism for customers to completely disable notifications.
Note: Parallels Access notifications are meant to remind users about subscription expiration to prevent the outage of Parallels Access. This way you can renew subscription on time.
… would really get on my tits. Thanks for pointing it out.
So long as you’re not trying to do anything too demanding VirtualBox is also an option to try.
Your main requirement is to print documents?
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Back on Bootcamp … I’ll leave it there.
I got rid of free loaders by charging £35 / hour or I’d suggest giving it the Land Rover treatment, which fixes everything… just stick it behind the back wheels while I reverse over it.
Soon got the message.
Curious I don’t get any pop up ads or notifications with my Parallels licence… I would find that objectionable. It just sits in the background and is there should I need it.
I normally deploy a similar plan and only help with Apple Macs or Linux machines but in this case I needed to be more pragmatic.
Mike
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That’s strange, from the forum posts it is still a problem for ateleast some of their customers…
I have had a look back in my records and my Parallels experience was in August 2011 (a tad later than I thought) with a “Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac” licence, I guess that is the equivalent to what is now 'For Home & Student Use". Perhaps the pop-up ads only occur on the cheaper versions, do you have a business or power user licence?
MIke
I often used to buy bundles of Mac software maybe from MacRumors but haven’t for ages as I raraely used any of the bundle content.
For once I’ve been sensible - having purchased a bundle including Parallels for 12 months last January or February I’d set a reminder to cancel Parallels annual subscription - I’d not used it once but the clock was ticking from purchase date not installation. I had older versions and in fairness a reasonable product with later challenges from VMware. However I just don’t have the time to dabble with these things anymore, nor really need them. That said I’ve had an horrendous day cloning my son’s MBP installation to a bootable external SSD as some software required by Mrs AC for a college course demands installation of software which needs to be granted administrator privileges and actually creates an admin account to work - all it does is screen capture delivery of a powerpoint/keynote presentation for heaven’s sake, hence I was unwilling to install on the MBP itself.
Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition licence, version 4.1.1 … on a subscription contract.
Aha, I suspect that is the difference.
One time payment = adverts
Yearly subscription = no adverts
That would also explain the lower level of angy comments on forums. When I tried Parallels there were several threads with angy customers including sone from businesses who had suffered an edvert while demonstrating their services to customers, they were rather angry, salesmen don’t like loosing a sale.
Mike
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