VMware Fusion 4.x $28 @ Amazon

[Gareth]

timg wrote:
Is there a consensus as to which one is better?

Read a review a while back (forgot where), that basically said, if you don't own either, and are running Lion, Parallels is the one to get now.

That said, I have Fusion, since in prior versions, it has been the better of the two.

[Trouble]

I prefer VMWare fusion. Here is a pic of OS 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, Win7, Win 8, and Haiku running on VMWare Fusion on 10.7.

[gabester]

I've used both Parallels and VMWare. I prefer VMWare - in part because Parallels has worked so hard to integrate the guest and host OSes. For my purposes virtualization is better served by having discrete VMs not seamless access to files on my desktop...

It depends on your purposes... If you need to use and interoperate with Windows on your Mac then Parallels is probably the way to go. But if you need to actually virtualize multiple operating systems for testing or other technical needs then you'll likely find VMWare better suits your needs - esp. since you can easily import those VMs into the more enterprise grade versions of VMWare.
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