Product Description

Run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side on your Mac, without rebooting, using VMware Fusion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4200 in Software
• Brand: Smith Micro Software Inc.
• Model: FUS-ENG-M-AP
• Platform: Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .35 pounds

Features

• RETURNS)

Customer Reviews

Amazingly simple to set up and use, with a couple of caveats
I have been very impressed with how easy Fusion has been to set up and use. I had a couple of hiccups early on, which caused me to have to run a full system check using my original Windows CD, it has run flawlessly.

For reference, I am running Leopard 10.5.6 for my host operating system and Windows XP Professional SP3 for the guest OS. Installed on the guest OS is Office 2007 and Neat Receipts Professional (my primary reason for installing Fusion and Windows on my Macbook Pro)

A couple of caveats:

1) If you go back and forth between a corporate network and a home network, particularly if you use a VPN when outside the office, you will need to change the networking mode from NAT to bridged (the default is NAT).

2) Don't twiddle with the number of processors in the virtual machine once it is "built" and the guest OS is installed. There is no reference to this in any of the documentation, but I believe this is what caused me to have to rebuild the guest operating system (Windows XP Pro SP3).

3) No matter what I have tried, I cannot get the Fusion guest to print to my network printer on my home network, which is standard Ehternet using Apple Airport devices. Printing to the office network (a networked printer available on the domain) is no problem, and printing from other Windows computers on my home network is not a problem using Bonjour either.

4) USB devices can be a bit tricky - if you plug in your iPod while running fusion, Windows may "grab" the USB device and then iTunes (running in OS X) won't recognize the device until you "unmount" it in Windows

5) Keyboard commands can be a bit confusing. For example, the "Command" key on the Apple keyboard maps to the "Windows" key on the guest operating system. This makes keyboard shortcuts maddening at times when you are trying to cut, copy, or paste back and forth between OS X applications and Windows applications.

6) Copying and pasting between host and guest OS works pretty well for text, but does not seem to work with OLE type objects or graphics. For example, if I am running NeoOffice on the Mac and Word under Windows I can copy a block of text from one to the other with predictable results. But if I highlight an image while in OS X, it does not paste into Word (but rather pastes the previous content of the clipboard.

7) Be wary of snapshots, and pay attention to the way vmware stores its files. You will see massive hard disk usage if you are not careful. I was taking a lot of "snap shots" because of the early problems I had and suddenly realized that I was running out of drive space! (I previously had 60+ GB of space before installing Fusion). Each snapshot takes up to several GB and the installation of Fusion and Windows XP Pro takes another 20 to 40 GB. My advice, don't take more snapshots than you need unless you have LOTS of disk space. There does not appear to be a way to "move" snapshots to a different volume or to take them and store than on a remote volume, which I see as a significant shortcoming of the product that will hopefully be addressed one day.

8) Time Machine backups - make sure you go into Time Machine and "uninclude" the entire "Virtual Machines" folder under Documents. If you don't do this, you will be chewing up a huge amount of space on your Time Capsule drive.

The Mac attack. Seeing is believing!
GREAT!!!

Upgrade for free to Fusion V 2.0 from this by installing V 2.0 (free download) and entering product key for V 1.0

Does everything it claims it does, plus virus, registry and system problems (due to installing ill behaved software) is solved in a minute by reverting to a previously saved snapshot. You are not limited to just one snapshot. Solves all your backup problems. If you desire you can duplicate your virtual machine to another computer (Mac) without Windwoes refusing to run and complaining about new hardware. Copy the VM directories to the other computer and click on the VM you want to run. Thats it!

Oh yes there is also a Linux world completely free with tons of excellent software FREE on the Web including Office Suite which comes with Linux.
Did I say FREE?

VMware Fusion
I just installed the VMware Fusion in my Macbook Pro (early 2008 edition). The installation went smoothly. Subsequently I installed Windows XP Home on the MBP and it was fairly easy also. Everything works beautifully. Three PC programs that I installed work perfectly. "Unity" puts a PC program in a Mac window. Great function by the designers. USB mouse also works perfectly. A USB external hard drive shows up nicely in the PC environment within Fusion. So far I am satisfy with this software.