So, we sat down last night to do some testing on the final release of VMWare Fusion. For the test, we used a Mac Pro Dual 2.66 with 5GB of memory. We wanted to do some speed test to find out how VMWare Fusion performed against its more mature cousin Parallels. The test was done with Windows XP Professional SP2 and included the following items:

Time to install from first boot to the desktop showed up for the first time.
Time to reboot with a clean OS install
Time to suspend the machine with a clean OS install
Time to boot with a clean OS install
Time to wakeup from a suspended system with a clean OS install

Keep reading to see the results

For both of these test we used an ISO image of Windows XP Pro SP2 and used the easy install option on Parallels and VMWare. We gave each machine 1GB of memory and tied one of VMWares arms behind its back and only used one processor to make it a fair fight.

Here are the results of our test:

Time to install from first boot to the desktop showed up for the first time

VMWare Fusion 8 min 52 seconds
(WINNER) Parallels 8 min 17 seconds

Time to reboot with a clean OS install

VMWare Fusion 0 min 32.3 seconds
(WINNER) Parallels 0 min 29.2 seconds

Time to suspend the machine with a clean OS install

VMWare Fusion 0 min 6.2 seconds
(WINNER) Parallels 0 min 3.7 seconds

Time to boot with a clean OS install

VMWare Fusion 0 min 25.9 seconds
(WINNER) Parallels 0 min 15.7 seconds

Time to wakeup from a suspended system with a clean OS install

VMWare Fusion 0 min 10.4 seconds
(WINNER) Parallels 0 min 4.7 seconds

So, as you can see Parallels wins the speed test in every category.

We will be doing more speed test this evening with dual processors to see how VMWare Fusion stacks up with its extra hand untied.

Some other thoughts

Parallels has a great product that is currently in its third version. The product is much more mature than VMWare Fusion, but Fusion has some things that make it very attractive. Fusion has been very stable to this point and has the ability to take advantage of multiple processors. It also gives you the ability to download and endless number pre-made virtual appliances that Windows users have been taking advantage of for a long time. While VMWare Fusion has the ability to take a snapshot of a machine, it does not allow you to do multiple named snapshots like Parallels. VMWare Fusion has handled every OS I have thrown at it so far, while Parallels choked on the SUSE and Fedora installs either during install or during updates.

I would have to say at this point, I would still have to recommend Parallels over VMWare Fusion, but with a few minor changes VMWare could easily change my mind.