PC virtualization to run Windows or Linux on your Mac

#10 | 4:10 |

The Sweet Stuff: Software

Thursday August 6, 2009

This week on

The Sweet Stuff: Software

, Michael "Doctor File Finder" Callahan takes a look at a few of the options you have available for

running Windows or Linux on your Mac

. If you'd prefer not to install

Windows on your Mac

with

Boot Camp

, this segment of The Sweet Stuff is for you. Doc takes a look at VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop for Mac.

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Show Notes

VirtualBox

- Free and full-featured.

- Has a clean, easy-to-use, easy to understand interface.

- Offers lots of configurable options including boot order.

- Offers "snapshots" to take your virtual machine back to an earlier time.

- Excellent help available.

VMware Fusion

- Take snapshots and rollback to an earlier time.

- Ability to attach and detach devices connected to your physical machines to the virtual machines.

- Many configurable settings including sharing, network, processors and more.

- Can import virtual machines from other programs and physical computers.

- Huge number of "virtual appliances" available from VMware.

Parallels Desktop for Mac

- Parallels Desktop for Mac was the first virtualization product for creating virtual machines on the Mac.

- Configurable Toolbar.

- Has the most configurable options for virtual machines of any product including network, boot order and more.

- Has Coherence Mode that lets Mac and Windows programs run together on your Mac desktop.

- Parallels Desktop for Mac can also import virtual machines created by other products.

- All three products are excellent.

Tagged:

free software

Mac

Mac software

parallels desktop for mac

Software

The Sweet Stuff

VirtualBox

virtualization

VMware fusion

Comments (5)

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By drff about four years ago
(2009-10-19 08:57:04)

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@Lacylinda - As you can see we now have the ability to add avatars! Pretty slick and I hope you enjoy it. ... Doc

By drff about four years ago
(2009-08-12 08:10:07)

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My pleasure, Linda, and thanks. hahaha; You make a good point about the avatars. You're right, it would be helpful if we could have a range of avatars to pick from or the ability to use a logo or image of our own. I'll look into it.

By Lacylinda about four years ago
(2009-08-09 17:58:00)

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Thanks for the explanation, Doctor. I really like your software pieces. Unrelated question: Are you, that is butterscotch, ever going to have more than two avatars available?? It would be helpful if people like me could use an icon or a small picture to indentify ourselves. Up above for example you and Abe look exactly the same. LL

By drff about four years ago
(2009-08-09 17:54:14)

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Overall VWware undoubtably is the leasder in virtualization. It's been several years since Parallels did anything with theri Parallels Workstation for Windows/Linux. But they were the first to hit the Mac and they've focused on it. Parallels Desktop for Macin offers many cool features that VMware Fusion does not but VMware Fusion is still a great product.