Parallels desktop of Mac versus Fusion 4 and Windows Office for Mac

[glsda]

I just purchased an iMac and it is a beautiful piece of technology. That being said I have been a PC user most of my working life and that is a long time. The change is challenging, frustrating and fun. I am asking for any user experience with VMware's Fusion 4, Parallels 7 and Windows Office for Mac. I believe that the first 2 run 'virtual' systems on the Mac where as the later is an application run on the Mac. My research indicates Parallels is 'better than Fusion but do I need either of would Office for Mac suffice? For you techies in the group and I know there are many please forgive any minor or major transgressions. I just want to be able to open emails that may have documents in Microsoft office. I am committed to learning the ways of Mac. Any words of wisdom, advice, do's or don't s will be appreciated. It is at the forum that I learned how to get the most out of my iPhones and iPads and I am very appreciative of that. I know the wisdom is here and ask that you share it with me. Please excuse the typo in the title.

 

[owieh]

Office for Mac in itself is quite a beast, I prefer it to Apple's iWork suite. As you'd already be knowledgeable as to how Office for Windows work, you won't find it difficult to get your way around the Mac version. I think it's just the looks that you will need to get used to.

As you might've seen already, there are two versions of Office for Mac; Home & Student and Home & Business. It is quite obvious that the latter will entail more software than the previous, if you need Outlook it might be best to get the Home & Business version.

You should be able to open files that you used to open with Office on your PC. The Home & Student version comes with Excel, Word and PowerPoint, so more or less you'd be able to open most Office files.

As for virtualisation softwares, I primarily use them to run applications that are not available for the Mac. At college, we use emu8086 for our Assembly lessons, as it doesn't have a Mac version I have to run it through Parallels running Windows. Whichever you choose, you will need a copy of Windows to load up through the virtualisation software.

I do hope this helps in some way.

 

[glsda]

Office for Mac in itself is quite a beast, I prefer it to Apple's iWork suite. As you'd already be knowledgeable as to how Office for Windows work, you won't find it difficult to get your way around the Mac version. I think it's just the looks that you will need to get used to.

As you might've seen already, there are two versions of Office for Mac; Home & Student and Home & Business. It is quite obvious that the latter will entail more software than the previous, if you need Outlook it might be best to get the Home & Business version.

You should be able to open files that you used to open with Office on your PC. The Home & Student version comes with Excel, Word and PowerPoint, so more or less you'd be able to open most Office files.

As for virtualisation softwares, I primarily use them to run applications that are not available for the Mac. At college, we use emu8086 for our Assembly lessons, as it doesn't have a Mac version I have to run it through Parallels running Windows. Whichever you choose, you will need a copy of Windows to load up through the virtualisation software.

I do hope this helps in some way.

Chris,

Thank you. You cut to the chase and I appreciate it.

Jerry

 

[Tinman]

I have all three: Fusion, Parallels, and Office 2011 for mac.

If you are only looking at a virtual machine solution in order to run Office, I would say Office for mac would be the better option. I bought the Home and Business version thinking I would still want to run Outlook. But I never used it. If you don't have a compelling need for Outlook I would recommend the Student and Home version. It is only $119.99 at full price but can be found for under a hundred. Not much more than Fusion or Parallels.

That said, you might think running the native mac Office would be a whole lot faster. It is faster, but Office is one of the most "piggish" apps on my macs.

Finally, I do run Office 2010 in a Parallels VM because I need to run MS Access. All the other apps work perfectly for at opening files between the mac and Windows versions of Office. But there is no Access on the mac side, sadly.

Oh, and between Fusion and Parallels I would choose the latter. I notice much more lag with Fusion. Parallels feels much smoother to me. But stability wise, it is said Fusion is better (I have not had stability issues with either).



Michael