The IOStream Help Desk has been getting a lot of questions from our Apple OS X users about how Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion stack up against one another. David Chartier of the The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) wrote up a very nice synopsis of a CNET Labs benchmark test:

“Whenever two options are presented, it is often a smart move to weight the pros and cons of each and make a decision based on your needs. If you need to push Windows in a virtualization environment, Daniel A. Begun at CNET Labs has benchmarked Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. The short of the long? If you really need to push Windows, do it in Boot Camp if at all possible. If Boot Camp is out of the question, VMware Fusion was the winner in heavy duty, multimedia tasks by a landslide, due largely in part to its support of multiple core processors (Parallels, as of this writing, only supports one core per CPU). On the flip side, however, Parallels Desktop is the only virtualization product that supports 3D gaming right now…” (Click HERE for the text of the full article)

It should also be noted that both Parallels and VMWare produce virtualization products for the Windows platform as well as for Apple’s OS X. These products allow Windows users to run multiple versions of Microsoft operating systems as well as multiple distributions of Linux.

UPDATE: VMware Fusion 1.0 retails for $79.99 US but there is a limited time $20 rebate offer that reduces the total to $59.99. Click HERE to find the best available price for the retail version. Academic users can obtain the software for $39 US. Click HERE to find the best academic price.