
InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at
VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC
off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the
best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers
near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I've given up on Parallels. I purchased 2 licenses for Version 2. It would not keep up with kernel changes for Ubuntu - even if you stayed with the LTS version (Ubuntu 8.04). Every kernel update would break it, and eventually they stopped breaking it. THis was even though Canonical sold it in their store!!
Then version 4 came out - I bought the upgrade. It worked when I had Ubuntu 9.04, but it stopped working with 9.10, and I've never been able to get it working again since.
When Parallels works, it is a nice product. It's just too unstable and poorly supported. IF they can get enough funds to properly support it, it could be a good product - certainly the price is right.
From what I gather, the Mac version is better, but I do not have a Mac to test that out - just from looking at the forums.