Parallels vs. VMware

[chuck_agari]

I think I'm switching back to Parallels.

After a bunch of research into posts here and feedback on questions I'd posted, we bought VMware after it seemed that running Flare in Parallels was causing issues that VMware did not see. But as it turns out, Flare in VMware runs achingly slooooow. (Not to mention the access to Mac software is not as easy or robust as it is with Parallels.)

Sure, I'm just one data point, but Flare is definitely snappier in Parallels. And I'm not talking after I've been running for a few days, but when I start up my (2017, with 16GB of RAM and an i7 CPU) MacBook, start up VMware, and start up Flare, doing anything is still achingly slow. And this a project with just a few dozen topics. Parallels, no so much. My Flare waits in Parallels are similar to a native Windows machine, although still typically less-that-snappy after all these years under the yoke of .NET. VMware seems to put the CPU under much more load as well. (In both, 8GB of RAM is allocated for the VM.)

Although I was warned away from it, I also am using a shared folder for my projects, although I'm not (yet) using source control. Until MadCap decides to dump the creaky old .NET foundation and create a truly useful cross-platform version (or a SaaS version, which might be what they're eventually aiming for with Central, although that UI leaves a LOT to be desired), this data point seems to suggest that Parallels is the better option for running Flare, at least the current version of Flare with Windows 10, than VMware.