Fusion offers access to built-in iSight cameras, Apple Computer Inc.'s Bluetooth adapter (built-in or USB) and built-in IR ports, which are treated as USB 2.0 devices and are not supported by Parallels.

Overall impressions

Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are good products. However, it is clear that Fusion still needs some work in terms of its performance and to fully implement its feature set. It also isn't quite as stable and reliable as Parallels.

All of that is to be expected from a product currently in beta testing, but it does mean that Parallels remains the better option for the time being despite the fact that Fusion offers some features that the commercial release of Parallels doesn't, such as drag and drop, control over how many processor cores virtual machines can access and full USB 2.0 support.

It is also worth noting that the next release of Parallels is slated to offer at least two of those features -- drag and drop and USB 2.0. It is also slated for several more advances including the ability to use a Boot Camp partition as a Windows boot disk instead of a hard drive image file, greatly enhanced network options and full support for CD/DVD drives (including burn capabilities and access to copy-protected discs). There will also be a new mode called "coherence" that will allow Windows applications to run alongside Mac applications without the need for a separate Windows interface (i.e. Windows applications display right on the Mac desktop and appear in the Dock).