Had been disappointed with Parallels of late, so it was great timing that VMWare offered a tool to convert my Parallels VM file into VMWare Fusion format. Combine that with the 30 day free triel, and how could I go wrong?
I will grant that VMWare Fusion does a couple of things much better than Parallels that are very important in my line of work:
First off, I can actually run Blackberry Desktop Manager successfully. It doesn't hang on reading the device's applications the way Parallels does. So far, so good.
Second, I use Positive Networks' VPN client to stay connected to my office. Recent changes in the security settings have confused Parallels to where it cannot reconnect reliably once timeout or sleep has occurred. VMWare Fusion calmly asks me to re-authorize. Very nice!
However, in my testing with VMWare Fusion, I have come across a few niggling bits that, while not standing in the way of me switching to VMWare Fusion permanently, are rather annoying when compared to the fact that Parallels does not have these issues:
USB devices, once used by the virtual machine, seem to be unable to be used by the Mac OS once disconnected from the virtual machine until I restart my computer.
VMWare Fusion keeps forgetting that I prefer to run in unity mode. Any time I run VMWare Fusion (even if I am resuming a suspended system), it always reverts back to single-window mode.
While on the subject of unity mode, displaying the taskbar in unity mode puts it underneath where the Mac OS X dock would go. In order to be functional, I had to turn dock hiding on and shrink my dock so I didn't set it off anytime I tried to go to the XP start menu.
Parallels makes it much easier to share files between OS'es. A simple menu setting, and I'm done. VMWare Fusion, however, requires me to configure a complicated path in addition to checking a box in the settings menu, and I have yet to get it to work.
Again, these issues are minor compared to the stability of mission-critical things Parallels seems unable to do. However, if VMWare Fusion could fix my annoyances, it would be perfect, and certainly my choice (as well as my clients') for Windows virtualization on Intel Macs. Would anyone happen to know how I can resolve them?
