Competition is definitely a good thing for Mac virtualization software. I had switched to VMware because I found it to be faster than Parallels (at least on my old MacBook Pro). When Parallels released their new beta yesterday I decided to give it another chance and I was pleasantly surprised.
It now feels faster than VMware and the improved Coherence looks great. Unlike VMware, it boots directly into Coherence; with VMware I have to switch manually into Unity after it finishes starting up. It also doesn’t seem to slow down other applications as much as it did on my old MacBook Pro. It does seem to run down the battery faster than VMware if I use it unplugged, though.
