Parallels, on the other hand, charges you $79.99 ($49.99 for upgrade) for its Mac virtualization product. Here's what I found: Pricing and installationīoot Camp is free and pre-installed on every Mac (post 2006). After having some severe performance issues with running Windows 8 Developer Preview under Parallels, I decided to use Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 under Mac OS X Lion for my test. These claims, coupled with enhanced support for USB, networking and sound cards (7.1 surround sound in a virtual machine), made me curious.Ĭan I run my Windows applications under Lion on Parallels Desktop 7 with no compromise? Can I run it all day?įor this shootout, I took the plunge and used Parallels Desktop 7 for over four weeks. The company also claims that Parallels Desktop 7 runs 45% faster using Windows 7 and 60% faster on 3D-accelerated applications (games, rendering, etc.) than before. They also made a big promise of running Windows ' without compromising performance'. And they didn't exactly play small: Parallels promised not just the full-blown Lion support (Launchpad, full screen mode, Mission Control) and the ability to run Mac OS X Lion as a guest machine.

It was only a couple of days after that article went live that Parallels came out with version 7 of their 'Parallels Desktop'.

In part 1 of my Running Windows on a Mac series, I made it very clear that virtualization solutions such as Parallels or VMware Fusion are merely a compromise for anyone who needs to get serious work done or has to spend several hours in full-screen Windows.Īnd I didn't just base that on my past experience with virtualization, but also one some benchmarks Ed Bott performed this summer.

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