1. I like the idea of running Windows and OSX side-by-side* AND
2. I don’t have enough hard drive space (I run all my VMs off an external drive) AND
3. I haven’t rebuilt my Mac in a long time to free up enough space

• Yes, I am aware VMWare Fusion has the ability to run a VM from the Boot Camp partition and if I ever get around to freeing lots of space from my MacBook or adding a larger capacity hard drive, I might try this option.

With that in mind, I wanted to capture this post of Boot Camp tips from TheAppleBlog for future reference.

Boot Camp: Taking the Sting Out of Your Sin

Sometimes I need to know the IP address of a specific Windows computer on my local network.  OS X doesn’t appear to automatically resolve a NetBIOS name to an IP address when using the ping command from the Terminal.  So, instead, you can use nmblookup.

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-->ryan@Augustus~$ nmblookup vista-mce
querying vista-mce on 192.168.1.255
192.168.1.108 vista-mce<00>

In the example above, "vista-mce" is the NetBIOS name of the computer I want the IP address for.  There a number of options for nmblookup that you may need depending on your network.  Check the man page for more details.

So, what virtualization software should you use to run Windows simultaneously on Mac OS X?  Well, the good news is that the two primary choices, Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion, are both excellent options and the choice really just comes down to personal preference and your intended usage.

There are several reviews and comparisons you can read about so I will not rehash them here.  I did a (very) brief evaluation of both products before I made a decision.  From the start, VMWare had an advantage in my mind for a few reasons:

1. I already have a few VMWare virtual machine images that I regularly use and that could immediately be used under Fusion without any type of conversion process.
2. Fusion provides better support for other operating systems besides Windows.  This is important if you want to run Linux for example.
3. I have used VMWare products happily for a number of years.

So, all other things being equal, I would have picked Fusion and I wasn’t expecting to have a tough decision.  But, I did want to give Parallels a quick try.

Integration

What I found was that Parallels provides a number of a number of nice, user-friendly features that make running Windows in Mac OS X a much more integrated and consistent experience.  Both products offer the ability to run a Windows application within OS X as if they were a native Mac application (the other options include running the entire virtual machine in a window or full screen).  In Parallels, this mode is called Coherence and in Fusion it is called Unity.

The behavior of Fusion’s Unity mode seems inconsistent.  Overall, it works pretty well and you can have a Windows application running as what appears to be a normal Mac OSX application.  However, the way it integrates within OS X is not perfect.  Sometimes, the application icon will show up in the dock; other times it will not. 

(Click for a larger image.  Note that I am running Windows Live Writer and IE7 in the foreground but only the icon for Windows Live Writer shows up in the dock.)

Also, a huge disappointment in Unity mode is the lack of multiple monitor support.  If you are running in Unity mode, your Windows applications can only run on the same monitor you are running the main Fusion application on.

Parallels’ Coherence mode seemed to work much more consistently and provided a much more integrated experience.  Applications consistently showed up in the dock and Windows applications could be used fine across multiple monitors.  Parallels also has a number of other features that make using Windows in a Mac a more seamless experience.  One I particularly liked was being able to mount the Windows file system directly within OS X.

Note that both programs have the ability to use a boot camp partition as a virtual machine.  This means you can install Windows on a boot camp partition and boot straight to Windows if you need to or use the exact same Windows install as a virtual machine while you are in OS X.  I did not try this option since I am expecting a virtualized Windows instance to provide the functionality and performance I require.  However, this is a nice feature and is something I may try down the road (maybe with Leopard).  This is a particularly good option for gamers.  I’d love to hear about anyone who is doing this now with success, particularly with Vista.

Performance

Although I didn’t do any scientific performance testing, my anecdotal experience suggested that Fusion performed noticeably better than Parallels.  This is consistent with the testing done by CNET here and probably has a lot to do with Fusion taking advantage of both CPU cores. 

Conclusion

Along with the initial three reasons listed above, performance was the deciding factor in my ultimate choice of Fusion.  Although some of the features in Parallels make it a more user-friendly and more tightly integrated option, my primary concern was performance and Fusion seemed the better fit there.  Hopefully, VMWare will fix some of the UI and integration flaws in future releases.  In either case, I don’t think you can go wrong with either product and I am sure they will continue to improve in subsequent releases. 

I am a longtime Windows power user who just recently purchased a MacBook Pro.  This will not be a “switcher” blog as I have no intention of abandoning Windows which, believe it or not, I really like.  Instead I will attempt to cover my experiences running OS X and Windows at the same time on Apple hardware using virtualization.

Until purchasing my MacBook, I had absolutely no experience with Apple hardware or software.  I had often been curious to try it based on other peoples’ positive experiences but, considering I make my living writing Windows software, it remained nothing more than a curiosity as switching platforms would have not been feasible for me. A new Mac would have been, for me, just another expensive toy that I didn’t really need.  So, what changed?  Two things:

1. Apple’s move to Intel
2. Advances in virtualization software (VMWare Fusion or Parallels)

With these two things, it is now feasible for me to run the Windows software I require while running OS X at the same time.  Apple hardware can now serve as my primary computer for both work and play.  It still remains an expensive experiment but so far has been working well.  It’s too bad people cannot try this using less expensive PC hardware.

So, on this site, I will try to document my experiences learning to use the Mac from a Windows user’s perspective.  Also, I will try to cover the challenges, tips, and tricks that I discover while running Windows on the Mac at the same time.