Really? Most people seem to think Parallels is better and it has more market share. Parallels 8 runs consistently faster than Fusion 5 too, especially in 3D performance: (Apparently, benchmarks in Geekbench with the latest versions of both titles is less than 5% off native OS X performance.)
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/parallels-desktop-8-vs-vmware-fusion-5-benchmark-showdown
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/1...llels-desktop-7-and-vmware-fusion-4-reviewed/
I also want to run my Windows apps in coherence mode in Parallels as if they were native OS X apps, i'm not sure if Fusion 5 has the same feature.
Sure, VMware supports this. I am recommending it because of the support it has and that it doesn't hack the kernel of OS X, unlike Parallels which can leave things dice-y to say the least. Heck, they may have solved that issue by now but the pedigree of VMware compared to Parallels in the virtualization business can't really be ignored. Every business I know of uses VMware.
I can get a Office 2011 for Mac for $40 which is pretty cheap, so maybe i'll just get that.
I am a bit concerned that the Acrobat for Office from CS6 won't work with the Mac Office suite though, so maybe it'll be better to get Windows version of Office 2013 and run that virtualized together with CS6.
And I don't want to get Creative Cloud because it is far more expensive than buying a perpetual license since I can get the student version. I might consider getting a Mac version of CS when CS7 comes out but i'm not shelling out the $350 when I just got CS6 for Windows.
Alternatively, I could just go with my initial plan and run Windows 8 natively through Boot Camp and not use OS X. Though i'm a bit concerned about the spotty scaling support in Windows and Windows apps (for example Photoshop etc completely ignores the DPI scaling settings in Windows meaning it will render everything at 2880x1880 with no resizing of the GUI, making everything tiny.)
Maybe I'll just do some testing once I get the laptop, Parallels has a trial option so I can see how that compares to running Windows natively.
What are the general advantages/disadvantages with running Mountain Lion over Windows 8. I'm not familiar with Mac OS at all, compared to Windows is it less of an OS for power users? (like iOS).
I've heard about some of its idiosyncracies like apps not having a 'Save as' option so you have to copy and paste the file if you want to save it to a new folder.
I'm sorry, are you using your Student version of CS6 at work? Your workplace should be supplying you with a license for sure.
Setting DPI to 2 (or 200%) in Windows should make everything quite manageable, although I haven't tried it personally.
The advantages for OS X over Windows are many but they may not suit your workflow. The UNIX underpinnings are very important for me (Terminal, SSH, Apache server etc), they may not be for you. In essence, you can accomplish more in OS X as it is UNIX based and gives you far more "power user" options compared to Windows. Pretty much the entire scientific field uses Linux or Mac OS X because they are UNIX based and enables them to run and compile programs natively. Just take a look at the
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab mission control after they touched down the Curiosity Rover on Mars.
Acrobat Pro X and Distiller are available in CS6 for Mac?
It's true they dropped the notion of Save As (
although if you like the old ways you can enable it).
The one disadvantage I can think of if running the MacBook Pro in Windows, is it only runs on the discrete GPU (the Geforce GT 650M) and gets less battery life. OS X is better suited for mobile devices, as AnandTech have shown on several occasions.
Also Adobe just released a new update to Premiere Pro to support HiDPI (both Windows and Mac OS X), so it should come to Photoshop as well.
The best way to learn Mac OS X is to forget what you think you know about Windows. It take some getting used to but all the people I personally know that have switched would never go back.
