Fractals etc., for Mac

I got my MacBook Pro on Saturday, spent my birthday weekend out in the middle of nowhere and I'm installing everything I need on it now that I'm back home with real internet again.  I'm new to Mac but loving it so far.

I want to install Vista Home Premium x64 in a virtual machine for UF, Apophysis and especially Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.  I'm deciding whether to go with Parallels or VMWare Fusion and I'm sure that some of you are Mac users so I want to know what kind of experience you've had running fractal programs with either of them.

I'm a dedicated DNS user -- I REALLY don't want to have to train another speech recognition program -- and it's just the best there is; it's also Windows-only.  I've been using Vista for about 2 years and don't want to go back to XP either, I actually like Vista better without flashy Aero effects.  

MBP's specs:  17" 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 duo, 3 GB RAM, 200 GB SATA + 250 GB external, Radeon x1600 256 MB, with Leopard.  I also have a second 22" display.  I got it used from a trade-in at my stepfather's Mac store with a brand new battery.

Even in the VM it will be faster than the Vista setup I had on my old PC.  DNS eats memory like Apophysis so performance will be very important for either of them, but UF will perform well with almost anything in my experience.   Do you like Parallels or Fusion for fractal art or which would you suggest?  So far I think Fusion is appealing to me more, I have used another VMWare product and liked it but I would like to hear what some of you think before I buy.