Boot Camp Poker

So you’re a gambler. And although you like to consider all of the angles before laying odds on anything, you’ve come to trust the Apple franchise to such a degree that you’ve installed Snow Leopard without hesitation.

What now.

Will you still be able to 20 table pokerstars with pokertracker running on your virtualization solution? Here’s the skinny.

Parallels: Parallels is ready to go. Check out Parallels desktop 4.0 - compatible with Snow Leopard and with significant speed claims over the competition (read VMWare’s Fusion). To make the transition they recommend:
Backing up your system as you normally would. Copy the parallels files (.pvm) located in User/Documents/Parallels. Close Parallels prior to Snow Leopard installation. Then once Snow Leopard and Parallels 4.0 are installed, transfer your .pvm file(s) back to the same folder and click on it to add it back in to your virtual machine list.

VMWare Fusion: VMWare has been a bit slower to react to the early release of Snow Leopard. This is the same issue that has plagued many OS X developers - and they can’t be blamed. However, at this point, Fusion has dropped once again behind Parallels. Clearly they are working on it and are reporting an experimental support in version 2.0.5. Shouldn’t be long before they are back in contention. Looking forward to their newest version, as it may be too much to switch back to Parallels.

Oh well, I’m not sure if I want to review PokerTracker and suffer through my most recent losses on Full Tilt and Pokerstars all over again.

VM Ware is offering their fusion for only $59.99 right now.   I’ve been using this flawlessly on my iMac.

Allright Mac Poker on Parallels enthusiasts, serious competition is here. CNET and Lifehacker have come out with reviews/comparisons of the two virtualization options. Lifehacker (which is a great productivity blog - add it to your RSS if you aren’t reading it yet) puts the question to the lazyweb blogosphere: What are you using, Parallels or Fusion. And the answer is? 54% Parallels 46% Fusion (N=~2000). Suprising numbers, since Parallels was first to market. I haven’t made the switch to Fusion, because apparently, moving back is difficult.

Fusion is no fly-by-night app, though. The virtualization software is being put out by industry leader vmware, who appear to be catching up quickly to the Parallels swsoft team - if they haven’t passed them already.

Some of the interesting aspects of Fusion:

• Uses BOTH duocore processors rather than only one
• Disk Images available to trial other operating systems
• Unity Mode =~ Coherence mode on Parallels, but some users like Coherence better
• Fusion seems faster to some

Overall - they still seem a bit even to me. I can’t afford to make the switch and as one user put it, end up in a: Parallels -> Fusion -> Parallels situation. However, competition is good. In the end, we are years beyond VirtualPC (ugh) and the Parallels/Fusion debate will only result in better final products from both.