VirtualBox 4 showed itself to be a bit more of an outsider in this case. The disconnecting and connecting of the devices while the VM is running is possible the same way as with a normal PC.

can be set using the user interface of the programs very easily, and all the connected devices can be attached to the VM's different programs at will. The administration of virtual hard drives, the network, and RAM, as well as the number of available processor cores etc. Printers don't have to be installed in the guest operating system separately, but can be inherited from the host system. In detail Parallels Desktop 6 offers more configuration options in some areas than VMware Fusion 3.1.īoth of the solutions share a clipboard with Mac OS and allow the exchange of files via 'shared folders' as well as drag-and-drop. This impression is due to the very similar user guidance. Finally install the 'Guest Additions' so that the drivers are available those that also want to install 3D support will have to start the VM again, and boot into Windows Safe Mode using F8, before the installation of drivers can begin.Īt first glance both of the commercial solutions appear to be very similar. Then during the first attempt to install Windows 7 we were confronted with the disenchantment: The external USB hard drive wasn't recognized, so the installation had to be carried out from the internal Mac DVD drive - 41 minutes. With the third candidate, VirtualBox 4, the installation completed very quickly - with an 80 MB download size, this is the 'smallest' candidate in our test. The procedure is the same as with Parallels Desktop 6 - via the menu the installation hard drive can be virtually connected, and the setup starts automatically. In this case VMware Tools should be installed in the virtual machine after the installation for better support. The software is quickly installed and ready to use. Similar behavior showed itself with VMware Fusion 3.1.

Via a menu entry the installation USB hard drive can be connected for the Tools. Following this came the installation of the so called 'Parallels Tools', which is necessary to provide Windows with the drivers for the virtualized hardware components. The installation from the USB hard drive completed without any problems - after 18 minutes the login screen for Windows 7 appeared for the first time. After this we installed Windows as a VM straight away. The installation of Parallels Desktop 6 works the usual easy Mac way and after a few clicks the software is available for use.

Parallel vs vmware fusion 7