Product Description

With a highly optimized 64-bit engine, advanced memory and CPU management technology, VMware Fusion 3 runs the most demanding Mac and Windows applications side-by-side at maximum speeds without rebooting. With over 50 new features and a new ultra-fast Migration Assistant for Windows, it’s never been easier to run Windows on your Mac.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88 in Software
• Brand: VMware, Inc.
• Model: FUS3-ENG-M-CP
• Released on: 2009-10-27
• Platform: Mac OS X Intel
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Features

• VMware Fusion 3 provides the ultimate Windows experience on the Mac
• Optimized for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard
• 64-bit native and advanced 3D graphics
• Windows 7 support including Windows Aero and Flip 3D animations
• Ultra-fast Migration Assistant for Windows to transfer your entire PC to your Mac wirelessly or using an Ethernet cable

Amazon.com Product Description
VMware Fusion 3 is the Best Way to Run Windows on Your Mac. Run the most demanding Mac and Windows applications side-by-side at maximum speeds without rebooting. With over 50 new features and a new ultra-fast Migration Assistant for Windows, it's never been easier to run Windows on your Mac.

The Best Way to Run Windows on Your Mac.

VMware Fusion 3 is the Best Way to Run Windows on Your Mac.

Using a Mac doesn't mean abandoning your Windows applications and devices. Ditch your PC and safely run your favorite Windows programs alongside Mac applications, while continuing to use your Windows-only devices on your Mac.

Move Your Entire PC with Ease

Effortless Migration--No Cable Required
Wouldn't it be great if you could use your new Mac, yet have access to your old Windows PC, without the clunky hardware? Wouldn't you like to make the most of your Windows software investment on your new Mac? With the built-in Migration Assistant for Windows, VMware Fusion 3 can convert your entire PC and bring it over to your Mac in a few easy steps, giving you access to your Windows applications, documents and other files--whenever you need them. Just install a simple application on your PC, connect it to your Mac with a cable or wirelessly, and VMware Fusion will guide you through the rest. You can now recycle your old PC and still have access to your old applications and files, directly from the Mac you love.

Windows with Mac Simplicity

The Mac Way
Designed from the ground up for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, VMware Fusion lets you run your Windows applications--side-by-side with your Mac applications--the Mac way.

Seamless Integration
Instantly launch your favorite Windows applications directly from your Dock or the Apple menu bar at any time. Easily switch between apps and minimize them to your Dock--just like you would with Mac apps.

Run your Windows applications side-by-side with your Mac applications. Click to enlarge.

Instantly launch your favorite Windows applications directly from your Dock or the Apple menu bar. Click to enlarge.

More Mac-like than ever
VMware Fusion comes preloaded with new powerful built-in features to help you run Windows applications even more like Mac applications. The new always-on applications menu lets you access your Windows apps with a click--directly from the Apple menu bar, and the new resizable preview window lets you keep an eye on your virtual machines. The new full screen menu bar gives you complete control over your virtual machine and can be moved to any side of the screen to make guest user interfaces--such as taskbars and menu bars--more accessible.

Windows Powerhouse

Maximum Performance
With a highly optimized 64-bit engine, advanced memory and CPU management technology, run the most demanding Mac and Windows applications side-by-side at maximum speeds.

Advanced 3D Graphics
Play Full HD videos and run your favorite 3D Windows games better than ever with best-in-class OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 graphics support--all without rebooting.

Ultimate Windows Experience
Get the ultimate Windows experience on the Mac and make the most of Windows 7 with Windows Aero and Flip 3D animations.

Displays Galore
Display Windows and Mac OS X applications any way you want: side-by-side on your main display, in full screen, or across multiple displays connected to your Mac.

Peace of Mind

Protect your Windows Investment
Make the most of your Windows software investment and Windows-only devices by continuing to use the applications and devices you need on the Mac you love.

We've Got You Covered
Automatic snapshots allow you to roll Windows back to a safe state if something goes wrong. For added protection, we've included 18 months of free email support (English only) and a 12-month complimentary subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus.

Company You Trust
Built by the undisputed virtualization leader, VMware Fusion has won over a dozen awards for its unparalleled excellence.

Play Full HD videos and run your favorite 3D Windows games. Click to enlarge.

Make the most of Windows 7 with Windows Aero and Flip 3D animations. Click to enlarge.

Features

• Optimized for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard
• Highly optimized 64-bit engine, advanced memory and CPU management for maximum performance
• Advanced 3D graphics with support for OpenGL2.1 and DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3
• Support for Windows Aero and Flip 3D animations to get the ultimate Windows experience on the Mac
• New ultra-fast Migration Assistant for Windows to transfer your entire PC to your Mac wirelessly or using a cable
• More than 50 new features

What's differentiates VMware Fusion 3 from other solutions
VMware Fusion is designed from the ground up for the Mac and preloaded with powerful new features to help you run Windows applications even more like Mac applications. Engineered in California, VMware Fusion is the best way to run Windows on your Mac.

VMware Fusion 3 is recommended for:
Home users, students and business professionals who are looking for the fastest, easiest and most reliable way to run Windows and Mac applications side-by-side on their Mac without rebooting.

Technical specifications

• Windows Aero support
• DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3.0 support
• OpenGL 2.1 3D support
• Over 140 guest OSes supported: Windows XP, Vista and 7, Red Hat Linux 9.0, Ubuntu 9.04 and more!
• 64-bit Native
• Multilingual software (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Simplified Chinese)

What's in the box?

• VMware Fusion 3.0 Software CD
• Link to over 10 Video Tutorial
• Quickstart Guide
• VMware stickers
• 18-months of free email-support (English only)
• 12-month complimentary subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus.

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Customer Reviews

Hit and Miss
VMWare Fusion 3 has been hit and miss so far this morning. Running Windows Vista Enterprise 32bit is wonderful. It is much smoother and faster than it was in Fusion 2. However, Windows 7 Professional 64bit runs very choppy. Opening any program takes a few seconds, and it is much slower than when I run Vista. (And this is with a clean install of Win7 with a new Fusion 3 virtual machine.)

Here is what I have found really surprising: for the past month I have been using Parallels Desktop 5 beta. With Parallel's new beta you can also run the aero interface, but I found it to run much better with both Vista and especially with Windows 7 than it does with Fusion 3. The overall Windows Experience Index was much better for both Vista and 7 in Parallel 5 beta than in Fusion 3 now. Currently, I am getting a rating of 2.9 in Vista and I got a rating of 2.1 in Win 7. Within Parallels 5 beta, I was getting an overall experience index rating of 4.5 and 4.9, and that was with a beta copy!

If you are running Windows Vista with VMWare Fusion 2, then you may wish to upgrade for the added speed increase. It feels a lot faster for me. However, 64bit Windows 7 is very slow and clunky. Even with the enhancements off, the OS still ran slow. I might suggest waiting for Parallels 5 to come out if you will be using 64bit Windows 7, as the current beta ran that OS much, much better.

Another issue that I would like to point out is this: the promo video says that you can now play full HD videos with the new updated graphics engine. I tried this out in the 64bit Win 7, and it was extremely choppy. However, my Windows Vista virtual machine plays videos very smoothly.

I recommend you download the trial from VMWare's website and test it out before you decide to buy.

Here are the specs on my computer: MacBook Pro Early 2008. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz. Snow Leopard 10.6.1. 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM. 512GB nVidia GeForce 8600M GT.

Update:

A recent problem that I have discovered is that while Fusion 3 "allows" me to expand or reduce the size of my Windows partition hard drive, the changes are not apparent once the OS is booted. I originally set Windows Vista to 20GB, and now I only have 47MB of space left on the drive. After expanding the drive to 40GB, it still only shows up as 20GB in Vista and says that the drive is full. I will have to contact VMWare to find a possible solution. - The problem is solved after running the "Extend Volume Wizard" in Vista. With Parallels 4 I never had to do this. Thanks to Evan H. Appelman for posting a link to a help article for me. It would be nice if VMWare would have included a popup or some form of instruction telling you to run the EV wizard after changing the virtual machine hard drive size.

2nd Update:

Today Parallels released Desktop 5. To me, I see a performance increase in using the same virtual machines within Parallels 5 than Fusion 3. Parallels 5 also gives me a better overall Windows Experience Index. In Windows 7 64bit, I am getting an overall experience rating of 4.5. Win 7 also feels more responsive in Parallels 5 than Fusion 3. I like Parallels so much better in fact, that I have removed VMWare Fusion 3 from my computer. For me it Parallels Desktop 5. I recommend, as always, for you to download the trials from both VMWare and Parallels, and see which you prefer. Also, if you already have VMWare Fusion 2, then I would say save some money and just upgrade to 3; the same goes to those who have Parallels 4.

Noticeable Performance Improvements, but 3D Gaming May Be a Bit of a Stretch
I have a 2009 17" MacBook Pro that I use with VMWare Fusion 2 to do Windows development and as impressed as I was with VMWare's Fusion 2 offering, I thought its weak point was performance, especially when using desktop operating systems that relied on 3D graphics. That's why when reading about VMWare's latest offering, I was excited to buy the upgrade to test out the promised improvements from the 64-bit foundation leveraging Snow Leopard's advancements, and the integrated 3D capabilities to add things like Windows Aero (3D transparent-bordered windows) support.

What I found was that Fusion 3 did indeed offer a faster, more responsive experience in every Windows operating system I tried from Windows Server 2008 to Vista to Windows 7. To add a caveat, the performance was actually very slow until I installed the latest version of VMWare tools on each system (a necessity for all versions of VMWare Fusion), which I suspect may be the source of the performance problems other reviewers mentioned when first trying Fusion 3, but after VMWare tools installation, everything ran a bit faster than with the previous version of Fusion.

I also ran "Windows Experience" tests on both my old PC-migrated Vista VM and a fresh installation of Windows 7 and whereas the old score was 1.0 (terrible) for both systems because of (lack of) 3D performance, the new scores came in at 2.7 for my old Vista migration and 3.5 for the fresh copy of Windows 7 with the weak point still being 3D capabilities. Not bad. More than enough to run Aero for sure, and perhaps enough to support older 3D games. I wouldn't get my hopes up for being able to run Modern Warfare 2 in a VM on your Mac with any sort of tolerable frame rate, however.

In general, I always liked how VMWare feels like a more native Mac application than other virtualization solutions and "Unity", the ability to run a Windows app in Mac OS X as if it were a Mac-native app, is even improved and more integrated in this latest version! VMWare has a long history of making great virtualization software with some of the widest support of operating systems, and Fusion 3 takes a good thing and makes it even better.

Overall I think it's the best virtualization solution for the Mac in general, and its performance enhancements make it a worthwhile upgrade for current users of VMWare Fusion 2.

Better than expected!
VMware Fusion 3 works great. I upgraded from 2.0.6 and the upgrade went trouble free.

I did not buy from Amazon. I was eligible for an upgrade and bought the upgrade directly from VMWare (vmware's site has been having issues today - but I was able to finally make it accept my credit card) . I had not registered my previous version at VMWare and had to register before getting the lower upgrade price.

My environment before upgrading:
Unibody Macbook Pro 17" 3.06GHz, 4GB RAM 1067MHz DDR3, Snow Leopard 10.6.1, 500GB 7200rpm disk with upgraded firmware, Chromium, Safari, Firefox.
- Windows 7 x64 bit VM running as Windows Server 2008 x64 OS setting in VMWare Fusion 2.0.6, 1.6 GB RAM, Bridged networking, 60GB HD split into 2GB, shared Documents folder, Office 2007, Sharepoint Designer, Photoshop CS3, bridged networking, Chrome, Firefox, IE8, Safari 4 for windows
- Ubuntu 9.0.4 standard recommended install
- few other VMs mostly inactive

I was cautious with the upgrade and followed these steps.
- I shutdown all VMs
- Ran the downloaded dmg installer
- Started VMware Fusion
- Compacted the disk (Disk Cleanup under Hard Disks settings)
- Changed Windows OS setting to Windows 7 from Windows server 2008 to take advantage of Aero
- Rebooted the host OS
- Ran VMWare
- Started windows 7 VM
- Installed VMware tools
- Rebooted Windows 7 VM (required by VMWare tools)
- Switched to Aero

Aero works great. Unity works much better. Windows 7 seems reliable and stable on 64 bit. I did not use Unity with version 2, but I think the new menu item in menu bar makes it easier to use it.

Windows Experience scores:
Processor score: 6.4
RAM: 5.5
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming graphics: 3.6
HD: 6.9

Good job, VMWare! I highly recommend Fusion 3 if you use Windows 7 as a guest OS. I have not used parallels so I can't compare but I did not see any issues running fusion 3 for over 4 hours.

Enjoy!