Type of Article: MacTech Reviews

Green cell coloring means Parallels Desktop was faster than VMware Fusion. A blue cell coloring indicates VMware Fusion was faster than Parallels Desktop. Darker coloring means faster by 10% or more, medium coloring indicates 1-10% difference, and lightest coloring means less than 1% difference. Those tests that could not be run due to lack of support from the virtualization software are shaded gray. (Note: Not all tests were run on all configurations, hence the empty cells.)

Application Launch Test

Here, we tested four of the most common applications used in virtualized desktop environments: Microsoft Office 2010 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Similar to the OS launch tests, an Adam launch is one where Windows has been completely rebooted, and then given a few minutes to finish its startup process. A successive launch test is done repeatedly without restarting Windows.

Test Types

There are a variety of often referred to, and utilized benchmarking suites in the computer industry including SPEC tests, PCMark, WorldBench, Performance Test, Unixbench and others. Each of these tests uses a series of tests that measure in a consistent way to assess specific types of performances. The key to each of these tests is appropriateness, repeatability, and accuracy.

The Big Question

So which virtualization product do you go with? Which solution is faster? Should you run Windows XP or 7? 32-bit or 64-bit? One virtual processor or more? In short, there are different answers for different people: it all depends on your needs. More and more, virtualization can do whichever is best for you.