Windows 7 on My Mac: Why I Switched from VMWare Fusion to Parallels Desktop.

As a graphic designer, Iʼve been relying on Appleʼs Mac platform for over 20 years. When I began designing for “interactive multimedia” in the early 90ʼs, I used my Mac for design and development, but I used a separate computer— a PC, running Microsoft Windows, to test my work.

In many ways, things havenʼt changed. The vast majority of my clients (and end-users) still use Windows to access the websites, flash demos, and web apps I now design. But instead of investing in hardware for 2 different platforms, I simply run Windows on my Mac whenever I need to.

This has enabled me to:

• Run multiple operating systems on the fly (e.g., Windows XP, Windows 7, etc.) without the expense of additional hardware;
• Experience my work exactly as others experience it (also great for testing and working with developers who may be responsible for implementing my designs);
• Create more realistic mockups that appear with, and within, the Windows GUI (graphical user interface), rather than exclusively with/within the Mac environment;
• Easily take screenshots of PC-based applications for Flash demos/tutorials that I create (sometimes my clientsʼ products only run within a Windows environment);
• Use PC-only software on my Mac when I need to (e.g., FlashJesterʼs Jugglor);
• Easily share Mac files with Windows apps (and vice versa).

But of course, these things would not be possible without my Intel Mac and Parallels Desktop for Mac 5.

As for VMware Fusion— the software Iʼve used to run Windows XP on my Mac for several years, I had to abandon it due to performance issues after installing Windows 7.

At the time of my Windows 7 installation, I was using VMware Fusion 3.0 on my MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM), but it felt more like Connectixʼ “Virtual PC” on an old PowerPC— which for me, was simply unusable.

Although VMwareʼs tech support was very responsive, after a few days of troubleshooting and reconfiguring Windows 7, they were unable to resolve the performance issues. And when Fusion 3.1 was released, I still had issues with the performance, when running Windows 7.

Thatʼs when I decided to take advantage of Parallelsʼ special offer for VMware Fusion Customers and give Parallels for Desktop Mac 5 a try. And Iʼm glad I did! No need to buy more RAM, or worse, another PC. It just works.

Tommy Oddo is a web designer and digital artist who lives in Austin, Texas. Entrepreneurs, marketers, and in-house teams hire him to make their websites and digital products more engaging and easier to use. Follow him on: Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, and Facebook. Subscribe to future articles via RSS and/or Email.