Parallels 6 or Fusion 3 or Virtual Box or Dell Zino? (1 Viewer)

I've used Parallels 3 and 4 for the past three years to run MS Money, connect to BootCamp, and infrequent misc Windows use. Since there's still no Mac finance app that meets my needs, my wife and I are talking about upgrading to the latest virtualization app, Windows 7 and installing the finance stuff on her newer iMac.


I can upgrade to Parallels 6 for about $40. It's the latest version and the one review I've read was game-centric, indicating it works fine but telling me nothing about productivity-app behavior. It's newer than the latest Fusion.


I can upgrade to Fusion 3 for $10 with their crossgrade promotion. I think it's contemporaneous with my Parallels 4; maybe P5.


I could go cheap and use the free Virtual Box, since we won't be connecting to a BootCamp partition anymore.


I wish I could use the cheaper Crossover tool, but it doesn't work with any of the finance apps, last I checked.


So: circa Parallels 4, the vibe was Fusion 3 was better. But now it's two versions later and Fusion is still at 3.x. What have you read or experienced? Are they all good? Save my money and use VB? Forget it and buy a $299 Dell Zino with Win7 Home for finances?


I didn't plan to upgrade this year, but the Fusion crossgrade is good through the end of the year and I don't know if it will be renewed in 2011

Parallels 5 was much faster than Fusion 3. I upgraded to version 6 when it was released and it's even faster than its predecessor. I've had no problems running any apps or using any peripherals within the Windows image.

Thanks. That's interesting. Fusion 3 was said to be quite fast compared to Parallels 3 or 4. I guess Parallels took note and did some good work on it.

I have used virtualbox for 3 years now and love it. Have not tried it on a Mac host before, ( just windows and Linux) but I have done a Mac guest.

Since it's free, give it a try!

How did this work out for you Dave? Did you take the Parallels 6/Windows 7 plunge?

Yep. Bought a Win7 home premium upgrade family pack (that's a mouthful) and parallels 6 upgrade. I followed the guide at winsupersite for installing win7 - it's time consuming but works. Parallels 6 and win7 feel faster than WinXP and parallels 4. All that to run Quicken Premier 2011.

If you are considering it now is the time to jump in via MacUpdate.

Love Parallels over anything else.