Customer Reviews

VMware Fusion - Old Version

5 star:		(157)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Usage: I'm a web developer and graphic designer. My workflow involves using a number of tools that are specific to Windows and others that are specific to the Mac. I also use virtual machines for remotely controlling computers and supporting asp and [...] websites.

Experience: I'm an owner of Parallels 2 and, as released, upgraded to Parallels 3. I was also involved in the Beta testing of VMWare Fusion. I have to acknowledge that the Beta versions of Fusion were not stable, however the release version was a tremendous step up from the Beta and significantly faster than Parallels. Parallels is fine if all you're running it for is IE6/7 browser support for IE specific website (i.e. quickbooks online). If you own Parallels and use it sparingly switching to Fusion is a waste of money. If you use audio, video, and graphic editing programs in your virtual machines you WILL notice huge performance gains running Fusion over parallels. There are numerous *free* appliances available from VMWare you can download, which work immediately and seamlessly with Fusion. Very nice.

Summmary/Recommendation: If you're in the market for a Virtual Machine application VMWare Fusion is my recommendation. If you already own Parallels and use it sparingly there's no need to switch. If you use Parallels with processor intensive programs I recommend switching to Fusion as it is much faster.

I am very impressed with this product. The virtual machine is running noticeably faster than the one I had running in Parallels, probably because of the multiprocessor support. Also I can finally use my x64 Windows XP Pro without resorting boot camp. Additionally, VMware is way more stable than Parallels. Parallels version 3.0 was crashing spontaneously at least once a day and the suspend feature would always result in blue screen of death on resume. I have yet to see a crash of any kind or a BSOD on resume with VMWare.

Like many MacAddicts on this site, I have a couple of PC based applications that I need to run apart from my Mac applications and didn't want to invest in separate hardware. I used Bootcamp Beta on my older iMac and found it to be OK but didn't like having to reboot to get to the other OS. Recently I purchased a new iMac 2.8 Mz with 4 GB of ram and wanted to see if VMware Fusion would provide me with the convenience of easily switching between Leopard (Mac) and Windows Vista Ultimate. The installation was reasonably painless and I had both systems up and running in short time. I loaded up my essential PC programs - MS Money and MS Publisher - and they worked like a dream. I did note that the Vista Aero effects would not work even when I optimized the system using the VMWare tools. Not a big deal. I then installed a PC game, Call of Duty, and could not get it to run effectively. I dropped back to earlier PC games such as MS Age of Empires and Command and Conquer and they also failed to perform adequately. I assumed it was a Vista thing and installed a separate copy of Windows XP which ran really well but just not games. Curious as to whether it was a virtualization (likely the MS/VM video drivers) versus hardware issue, I un-installed the Windows systems, re-based the Leopard system, installed Bootcamp and then Windows Vista Ultimate. After assuring Microsoft that I was not using my copy of Windows on multiple machines they gave me the secret code with authorized my Vista copy on my Bootcamp partition. When I brought up Vista through Bootcamp I found it to be very quick, Aero effects worked and more importantly, my PC games all installed and ran flawlessly. Now I am considering reinstalling VMware Fusion on the machine along with Windows XP to allow the easy switching back and forth between OS's (via VMware Fusion) and still have the capability of playing my *essential* PC games on the same machine via Bootcamp. In summary, I like VMware Fusion and it performs very well - just not with my PC based games.
(December 26, 2007 Update) I did install VMware Fusion on the Leopard partition and am running Windows XP and it is really running everything well with the exception of games. I love the ease of dragging pictures and files back and forth from WinXP to Mac and vice versa with no problems. I have PhotoShop in the Mac side and Microsoft Publisher on the Windows side and it is really painless editing jpegs and then dragging them into Publisher. Running very stable on both sides of the partitions. Still have Windows Vista Ultimate on the Bootcamp partition and it really handles the PC games well but not convenient for switching back and forth between PC and Mac OS's - reboot requred for every change. One curious feature I noted is with the two Seagate external backup drives I have attached to the iMac - one FAT 32 for Windows and the other HTFS format for the Mac. When I am running Leopard I can see and access both drives but when I start up VMware Fusion and bring up Win XP, the FAT 32 drive disappears from the Mac desktop and shows up on the WinXP side only. As soon as I suspend the VMware Fusion the FAT 32 pops up on the Mac desktop again. Not a problem, just interesting. I would suggest that if you are installing VMware Fusion on your Mac that you create enough space in your Windows partition to accommodate your future needs as well as your current ones - the methods I have seen for expanding partition sizes are fairly complex. Still really happy overall with this software.

I have tried Parallels and VMware Fusion and feel that the VM product is stabler and faster. Drivers in a Macbook Pro with Parallels took over 25 minutes to load and because previously I had the demo version of VMware Fusion I noticed a significant slowdown running Parallels, MAC-OSX 10.4 with Vista Home Premium. (by the way Vista rocks in a Macbook Pro with Fusion and have had no issues). VMware fusion is a great product! Unity, one feature of the program, will have your Windows programs running on your Mac like they are for the Apple.
**One problem** that I had and noticed others had when I researched it is: if you run your Boot Camp with VMware (did it to me also with the demo of Parallels), your XP or Vista will *not* be activated if you check your computer properties in the virtual drive (Windows) and counts down the 30 day. **Microsoft** is aware of this and you need to call them on. My boot-to-Windows-only-from-start was unaffected. MS fixed by phone.
Because these products (Fusion & Parallels) load proprietary drivers Windows thinks it is another install in VD.
This is more specific to those that have a running Boot-camp and use it before making it a virtual drive with the 3rd party programs.

Having finally crossed the border into MAC country after being a PC citizen for many many years its not so easy to give up the affliction to some of the PC programs so I picked up VMware Fusion & let me just say that it lets me have the best of both worlds. I read many reviews on Parallels & Fusion but decided to go with Fusion. I believe both programs are equally good. The installation was smooth as can be... I loaded up Windows XP Pro & voila! I had Windows purring away on my MAC! The best part of it is that the experience of using windows is actually more pleasant with the 'suspend' feature of Fusion which lets u literally take a snapshot of all the running programs under Windows & put it in a 'suspend' mode so the next time, one can just 'resume' where you left off!

I first looked at buying Parallels. After reading the reviews I decided to go with Fusion. What a pleasant surprise. I asked for this as a present. I dreaded installing it. You always wonder how smooth things will go. What I hate more than anything else is reading instructions on how to install things. Now don't get me wrong, you will have to set aside a couple of hours to install this, but the computer is doing all the work not me. I have a MacBook 2.2Ghz OS 10.5. I also have 4GB of RAM installed. I allocated 1GB to Window's XP. I threw in the disk and hit install. After it's all in, there is an update to VM Fusion 1.1 That's a 172MB download. That takes awhile. Again it's doing all the work, not me. Installation of Window's XP was also easy and effortless. Next step it was all running and running well. I have to run a program that interfaces with my company's 45 year old computer system. Now let me tell you that the people with Window's computers have a 50% failure rate of trying to use this program to access our company's computer. This program ran flawlessly on my computer. It operates fast and perfectly. One more thing, shutting down Windows and quitting VM then restarting is very fast. It takes about 20 seconds to boot up from a complete shutdown. I couldn't be more happy.

I purchased Parallels 3.0 and experienced a major crash, losing my entire virtual machine. I'm not sure what I did wrong that could have resulted in the crash, but it caused me a lot of grey hair and wasted hours.

I decided to try VMWare's 30 day trial, and then purchased it from Amazon. I haven't experienced any crashes or other buggy behavior with it. I do miss some of the Parallels slickness such as having the windows toolbar appear in unity mode, and being able to span multiple monitors. That was extremely slick and intuitive in parallels. I tend to not use unity in vmware as a result, and I go crazy copying and pasting between mac and windows because the ctrl/command keys are different between the OS's. If you run in Unity mode, the mac keys are mapped to windows functions. I wish this worked outside of unity mode. 1.1 is supposed to fix some of this, but no dual display support. Other thing being fixed (thankfully) in 1.1 is the ability to eject a cd or dvd using the eject key.

Overall, its a very powerful tool, and has been very reliable. Works fine with Leopard too. Just wish some of the UI was as slick as Parallels.

I tried Parallels (still have a copy, unused) and I preferred Fusion. Everything works wonderfully, and Windows 2000 is incredibly snappy on my Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Mac Mini with 2 GB of RAM, and with Tiger (OS 10.4). No complaints, except that trying to get the Boot Camp partition to run in Fusion is futile. I don't even attempt to do it anymore.

Other than the Boot Camp problems, it's really working great for me!

Note: Fusion worked very well on my previous Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo 1.66 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, OS 10.4) but a bit slower. Windows 2000 ran fine as soon as it was up and running, but switching back and forth from Mac OS to Windows was a bit draggy. But still, it was quite workable. Windows XP was not so great, though, so while it will run in an Intel Core Duo, it's not really a fun experience unless your Mac has at least 2 GB of RAM. But 1 GB *will* work with XP. Just slowly.

I've been using VMWare Fusion now for about a month on a 9 months old MacBook, and I'm very impressed and extremely satisfied. I have no experience with Parallels, so I can't compare the two. I've been using VMWare on Windows and Linux for many years now as part of my job as a Software Developer, so I expected VMWare Fusion to perform well, but still I was positively surprised by how well it performs. The Unity feature that allows running my Windows apps directly on the Mac OS X desktop works very well. But the key feature for me is the ability to actually run my BootCamp partition in VMWare while in Mac OS X. This gives me the flexibility to choose to run Windows natively whenever I don't need Mac OS X, and to run Windows inside Mac OS X whenever I have that booted up (which is most of the time).

I'm not qualified to write a feature-by-feature review of Fusion, but I've been using it since it first came out (and Parallels before that, until version 2.5) so I have some VM experience on the Mac.

In short, Fusion does everything I could every want. I use XP with Fusion on almost a daily basis and it's never let me down. It's fast, runs every app I have ever thrown at it, utilizes both cores, plays nice with OS X with respect to shared devices (like printers, DVD drives, USB peripherals, etc.), doesn't hog resources, and offers a very seamless workflow in Unity mode.

It's also nice that VMs created with Fusion run in WMware Player on Windows boxes, though that's a feature that I benefit from more at work than home.

If it's this good now, I can't wait for 2.0. Fusion has truly mitigated all of the reasons I had for not buying a Mac, and all without cumbersome rebooting (though I keep a Boot Camp partition for the occasional game, as native 3D is still superior to the support in Fusion and Parallels).