VMWare now has a nice utility called Vmware importer (beta 2) which takes Parallels image files (and Virtual PC image) and converts them to VMWare Fusion image files directly. The app is dead easy to use and from my own test converting some windows images from parallels to vmware I found I had no issues with the converted images.
The only caveat is that Importer only works for Windows based VM's at present. Currently supported are Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2, Server 2003 and Vista.
To convert an image all you have to do is:
- Drag the Parallels image onto the importer app
- See the details of the image are read by the utility
- Change the "disk options" so that it's not breaking the image into pieces or assigning all of the space at once (unless you that's what you want.)
- Start the conversion, say where you want to save it and go and make a cup of tea.
- Come back and use the resulting fusion image.
VMWare Importer is definitely much better than the previous solution using VMware Converter under the running parallels image it gets my vote. To try it for yourself you can download it from vmware.com