Anyone use it and is it straight forward and easy to use?

I'd go with fusion from what I've read.

If you just want to run the odd mapping application, you might also want to consider VirtualBox, especially as it is free…

I use it to run a virtual machine that is our work Win7 build. If anything, it is faster than my work laptop when I'm running it on my MacBook Pro…

http://www.virtualbox.org

I'd go with fusion from what I've read.

performance wise parallels 5 wins hands down over fusion. I run parallels 4 on my work mac and it's great – necessary evil unfortunately due to various daft external bank schedulers but it does the job admirably. I'll be upgrading to 5 once I get the go-ahead from our sysadmin and can order it…

parallels 5 wins hands down over fusion

I've got both, Fusion is far better. Screen is laggy on Parallels, makes scrolling up and down really irritating

Can't really tell the difference between boot camp and Fusion if it's full screen.

Another VMWare Fusion user here, though I've no experience of using Parallels I'm afraid.

Bought Fusion because I'd been told it was much better (read faster, less bugs etc.) than Parallels, and well… I've not experienced a single problem with it!

Barely use it any more though as I decided I really needed a decent PC as well as the Mac, which kind of necessitated getting a decent desktop.

I've got both, Fusion is far better. Screen is laggy on Parallels, makes scrolling up and down really irritating

what versions and what system are you running it on? I was looking to move to Fusion but the last 3 indepth comparisons I've read of the latest releases all have Parallels as outperforming Fusion. I've got a relatively decent mac at work with maxx'ed out RAM etc which I'm guessing makes a difference, something born out by the Mactech (very) indepth comparions: ie. take their gaming example, looking across the various Macs they test on there is quite a difference but even so:

# Portal, Frames Per Second in demo mode

* XP: Parallels Desktop 130.4% faster (28.5 frames out of 50.26 average FPS)

* Windows 7: Parallels Desktop 498.3% faster (94.4 frames out of 113.39 average FPS)

# Civilization IV: Colonization, FPS in demo mode

* XP: Parallels Desktop 52.6% faster (18.2 frames out of 52.73 average FPS)

* Windows 7: Parallels Desktop 45.2% faster (13.7 frames out of 44.12 average FPS)

# Quake Wars, FPS in demo mode

* XP: Parallels Desktop 28.1% faster (4.1 frames out of 18.92 average FPS)

* Windows 7: VMware unable to run. Parallels ran game fine.

! overall comparison:

The full review is linked here

what versions and what system are you running it on? I was looking to move to Fusion but the last 3 indepth comparisons I've read of the latest releases all have Parallels as outperforming Fusion. I've got a relatively decent mac at work with maxx'ed out RAM etc which I'm guessing makes a difference, something born out by the Mactech (very) indepth comparions: ie. take their gaming example, looking across the various Macs they test on there is quite a difference but even so:

I've seen those benchmarks before, but in an app like that the numbers don't necessarily tell the whole story.

Scrolling windows, moving things about, opening the start menu etc all feel like a native Windows machine on Fusion. On Parallels they feel juddery, a bit like you're working over a VNC session all the time. It might be 5% faster compressing some zips but who cares?