[olug] Parallels pros and cons vs. VMPlayer or VirtualBox

[Ben Watson]

My buddy convinced his employer to purchase a MacBook Pro with OSX
(obviously) for app development.  He's using Parallels on it to run
Windows and other Linux VMs.  Apparently recent versions of Parallels
have a feature called Coherence Mode that allows applications within
the VMs to be launched within OSX as if they were native OSX
applications.  For example, he's running a Windows VM within OSX but
on the OSX dock there are icons for Word, Outlook, etc.  When
launched, they have the appearance of being native applications (e.g.
in their own application window and not contained within the VM).
Further, I don't think the VM itself actually has to be powered on for
this feature to work.

As much as I loathe Apple products, even I had to admit this was pretty slick.

Ben

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Dan Linder <dan at linder.org> wrote:
> I have a coupon to purchase "Parallels Workstation 6" for $15.00.
>
> I already use VMWare Player for my needs, though VMWare Workstation
> has more bells and whisles but I can't justify it's cost.  VirtualBox
> has similar features to these two.
>
> I dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu, and I confirmed with their licensing
> department that I can buy a single license and install Parallels in
> both environments to have the cross-OS features.
>
> At $15 it's not too bad to purchase just to experiment with, but is
> there any compelling reason to use it over Player or VirtualBox?
>
> A co-worker runs OSX on his Apple laptop, but has to use a lot of MS
> tools (Outlook, Excel, Word, etc) that don't behave in the native OSX
> environment.  Is the Parallels seamless environment that much better
> than VMWare Workstation or VirtualBox offerings?
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
>
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