Hi everyone,
One of my consortium members at Yale is running a Mac shop, and we are looking for feedback on pros and cons of various products to allow us to run windows on the Macs. We are using parallels right now, but we're having some issues with copying/pasting, printing and general performance. Is anyone out there using Fusion or VirtualBox, or anything else?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks so much!
I would second (third?) the RDC option from a Mac. It will win on performance, plus you'll be able to manage that session with all of your familiar Windows admin skills without getting too deep into the Mac stuff (unless you want to). The only trick may be printing; I'm not sure how well mapping a ticket printer via RDC would work.
If you do want to go with the virtual OS, I'd recommend VMWare Fusion over Parallels, primarily on the support angle. I've used both and haven't had Christian's issues, but I have more trust in VMWare than Parallels to continue the product. I'd be curious to see how VirtualBox works, but I'm not willing to be the first to find out. :)
One win for a VM is that printing would win there, I believe. Sometimes print drivers on a Terminal Server are annoying, and taking printing off the WAN would help the speed. On the con side, it's more desktop management. If you're doing it, the marginal cost should be minimal, but if they're a pure Mac shop, they might not have the expertise for managing the Windows virtual desktops.
At Lyric, we support a VPN/RDC connection for Macs (and PCs), but we don't have people doing major printing at home. I'm bi-OSal too, so feel free to ping with any other questions.
CC