Compare Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion side by side to find the best virtual machine software for Mac. Discover reviews, free trials and special offers for Mac virtualization software. Nov 30, 2015 - Windows 10 on Mac: Boot Camp vs Parallels. Will run on a Mac pretty much like it would on a, say, Dell or HP laptop or custom-made desktop.

Click to expand.Boot Camp is 100% free. It comes pre-loaded as part of OS X's base software installations and the only 'cost' is Windows itself.

With Parallel's, you pay $80 on top of the cost of Windows itself. But the cons don't end there: 1) Decreased performance: You have to 'allocate' processing cores and memory specifically to Parallel's that comes out of what's available for OSX.

Meaning, you tell OSX to give your Windows 1-4 GB of ram and whatever's left over is needed for OSX to continue in the background. You also tell it how many cores to use. 2) Significantly less GPU power: Parallel's runs GPU emulation drivers to 'simulate' a dedicated GPU for Windows which further cuts your performance down. You essentially get a 50% Windows PC and whatever GPU it is emulating is also 50%.

The advantages: It runs in OSX. You simply press certain hotkeys and you can switch back to OSX in mere seconds. You can save state on the machine and quickly pause it to gain back resources for OSX. Because it's virtual, you can easily manipulate the virtual hard drive space for it to give yourself more space on the fly. However, Parallel's is MOSTLY for people who need to run non-graphics intensive software such as Windows exclusive production software or maybe AutoCAD or MATLab or ChemDraw or other science software that is Windows exclusive. Parallel's WAS NOT designed with gamers in mind. The advantages of Boot Camp: 1) 100% hardware support.

You're essentially booting into a Windows computer when you use boot camp and gaming performance, Windows performance is stellar. It's in some cases better than Windows performance on a Windows computer. 2) It's free. Boot Camp is free with OSX, you just need to 'buy' Windows 7 or Windows 8. Microsoft office for educators for mac. Parallel's costs money.

3) It uses all the hardware toward Windows. You don't lose performance by having a separate partition. 4) You can see your OSX files. It automatically loads your Mac hard drive as a secondary drive in Windows so you can view videos, documents and downloads from OSX on Windows as long as the file extensions are compatible (most times they are). The disadvantages: You have to shut down/restart and completely exit OSX.

I'd suggest that it would be logical for the report to follow a specific structure, but then we are talking Microsoft, so there's no guarantee. Click to expand.Fair 'nuff.

You lose hard drive space. You have to repartition your drive for Windows and the partition sizes, in most cases, are semi-permanent. While you can repartition, the last time I tried I 100% lost my Windows partition and all my games and had to reinstall. You only have 256GB of SSD space. I would recommend having an external hard drive that you use for Boot Camp and reserve all that glorious good SSD space for good old OSX. Cost wise, Bootcamp is free, so you just need a windows license. With parallels you need a windows license and to purchase parallels obviously.

Personal experience? I'd go with parallels, but it won't be suitable for gaming so it depends on how important that is to you. For me, I hate the windows experience but want some windows programs, so parallels is awesome - I just get the program window and even doc icons for that program. Office 2013 preview runs awesome - miles better than office for mac. Boot Camp is 100% free.

It comes pre-loaded as part of OS X's base software installations and the only 'cost' is Windows itself. With Parallel's, you pay $80 on top of the cost of Windows itself. But the cons don't end there: 1) Decreased performance: You have to 'allocate' processing cores and memory specifically to Parallel's that comes out of what's available for OSX. Meaning, you tell OSX to give your Windows 1-4 GB of ram and whatever's left over is needed for OSX to continue in the background.

You also tell it how many cores to use. 2) Significantly less GPU power: Parallel's runs GPU emulation drivers to 'simulate' a dedicated GPU for Windows which further cuts your performance down. You essentially get a 50% Windows PC and whatever GPU it is emulating is also 50%. The advantages: It runs in OSX.