Updated: 8:40am 11/06

Eagle-eyed readers to this blog will have already read three other posts (which I deleted due to being thoroughly pissed off with Parallels for taking advantage of my good nature) relating to the performance of two products from two virtualisation heavyweights of the PC and Mac world. For a while, things went rather quiet as Parallels Desktop 5 was released and pummelled VMWare Fusion 3.0.x into the ground.

Then VMware Fusion 3.1 was released. And it shows some fighting spirit. On my mid-2008 white Macbook (Intel GMX3100) Fusion 3.0.x ran like treacle. Graphics performance was exceptionally poor, and overall virtualisation performance was dire. Parallels, on the other hand, ran beautifully. I was all set to buy Parallels Desktop 5 when one of their representatives got in touch and pummelled me for information (and rather rudely I thought) and consequently published any findings on the Parallels blog without notifying me. I do not endorse products unless I am happy to do so and have been asked as a matter of courtesy, and having had Parallels give me (and others) the run around on version 3 stating that this feature will be included in version 3, that feature will be included in version 3, only to discover that no, these features will be incorporated into version 4 – a paid upgrade – I wasn’t particularly happy with their latest behaviour. I upgraded to version 3 from version 2 because of the noises being made about future inclusions into version 3. I did, eventually, reluctantly upgrade to version 4 in preparation for version 5. And then Parallels buggered my plans by taking advantage of me with regards to my blog entries. So I didn’t pay to upgrade to 5, and I haven’t used version 4 for many months – choosing to use Oracle VirtualBox instead. Performance isn’t as good, but it’s free and does what I need to do reasonably well.

During all of this, I haven’t paid to upgrade to Fusion 3 due to the poor performance and lack of VMWare’s dedication to the Mac platform. They have admitted they have a small team, and found that I could not commit funds while performance is still poor. That said, Fusion 3.1 is now performing very adequately on my rapidly aging Macbook – Aero doesn’t slow anything down and it just works. But Fusion doesn’t seem to remember Windows positions and I have to manually drag a Fusion 3.1 window to my liking every single time I start the Windows VM.

But could it? I’m currently re-visiting the Parallels camp again to compare Parallels against Fusion and I still believe Parallels has the performance edge.

Perhaps Parallels (and VMware for that matter) should switch to an annual subscription method. You pay ~$50 or so and get unlimited updates (minor AND major releases) throughout the year(s) you’ve subscribed. You can use the software indefinitely, but would only be able to download whatever is the latest release at the time of your active subscription. I think that would be a far fairer system for consumers, and would generate revenue for both companies. Works well enough for most other software I have.

What’s annoyed me throughout all of this testing is that Mac virtualisation still feels highly experimental and us consumers are the guinea pigs. I’m not sure who to blame for all of this – Apple, VMware or Parallels – I can only hope that it matures like the PC virtualisation market. The Mac is a highly versatile platform and it’d be a shame to see it flounder.