VMware: New Kid on the Block
May 8th, 2007
VMware has been
providing virtualization software for Windows users for years. VMWare Fusion,
which has been available as a free public beta since late December 2006 (I
tested build number 36932), is the company’s first Mac product.
Fusion
is still in beta. No ship date for a final version has been announced. Given
that, many features are mis-sing or incomplete.
This review is part 3 of
a 5-part series on
Four Ways to Windows for the
Mac.
Like Parallels, Fusion
installs with a standard OS X installer. But when it comes to installing
Windows, you have to run Windows’ installation program yourself. Fusion
supports 19 different versions of Windows, from 3.1 through the 64-bit versions
of Windows XP and Vista. You can also install Linux systems (including Red Hat
and SUSE), Novell’s Netware, Sun’s Solaris, FreeBSD, and MS-DOS.
Fusion’s other key differentiator is its support for what VMware calls
“virtual appliances” — preconfigured bundles of operating systems and
applications that you can download and install with a few mouse clicks. For
example, I downloaded MindTouch Deki, which lets you collaborate on documents
wiki-style. I expanded the archive and then double-clicked on the resulting
file. The appliance booted its operating system, configured itself, and was
ready to use in about a minute.
If you’ve ever wanted to test-drive
Linux, a Fusion virtual appliance is far and away the easiest way to do
so.
Running Windows apps in Fusion is
much like running them in Parallels: for the most part, they just work. I found
the speed in both Word and Excel to be more than acceptable; I was able to
scroll through a long Word document from top to bottom in roughly the same
amount of time it took me to do so while running Office 2004 in Rosetta on my
MacBook Pro. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 played as well as it did in
Parallels.
Fusion has a full-screen mode, too, but nothing like
Parallels’ Coherence mode. You can move files and folders between OS X and
Windows via drag and drop, but setting up a shared documents folder is much
tougher than it is in Parallels.
Fusion’s hardware support is mixed. It supports Bluetooth if
you install Apple’s Boot Camp drivers. Like Parallels, Fusion will let you use
your Bluetooth mouse within each program; unlike Parallels, Fusion lets you
bind new Bluetooth devices to the virtual machine. And Fusion supports both
cores in Intel Core Duo chips. In its latest release, VMware has added
“experimental” support for accelerated 3-D graphics, which worked just fine in
my testing.
On the downside, Fusion has no FireWire support, except as a
source of shared folders on a hard drive. I couldn’t get my Wacom graphics
tablet to work.
Overall, given that
this is still a beta release, I was impressed with Fusion. It’s got a ways to
go before it’s a polished Parallels competitor, and it isn’t ready for people
who need a stable, full-featured Windows environment. But it’s a good
start.
VMware Fusion beta (Build 36932)
Pros: Prebundled
“appliances” let you quickly install useful preconfigured systems and
applications; uses both cores in Core Duo chips; can run 64-bit Windows.
Cons: Tricky to set up shared folders; plenty of beta issues; sketchy USB
support; no FireWire support; no accelerated graphics.
Price: free (for
beta)
Company:
VMware
[Senior Editor Rob Griffiths runs the
MacOSXHints.comWeb site.]
Entry Filed under: News
