VMware Review
Sat 12 Jan 2008Filed Under: Apple Computers, Computers, VMware Fusion | Leave a Comment
After my first few weeks with VMWare Fusion I have to say that this is a great piece of software. It works as advertised and I now have three Windows XP installations working on the MacBook. So far I have not had any system or program errors.
No, I haven’t breached any license rules (for those self righteous types). I have Three genuine XP discs! I bought one to upgrade from Windows 98 years ago on the old PC and realised I needed an entire new PC to make it work properly which I then didn’t use. The other from the PC I built for an ex-partner which was returned for obvious reasons and finally one from work. Anyway enough of the history…
The sad part is that when I copied the actual VMware Fusion file containing XP to the backup drive and ran it out of curiosity it also worked fine. So I wasted hours installing three versions on the Macbook!
Mind you installing the OS’s was a simple process of selection how much HD space you want that version to use and how much system memory.
VMware’s and the Macbook’s overall speed is excellent. In the time it takes to fully boot Windows Vista on a separate PC I had the Mac running with OSX booted and XP running at the same time.
It also allows you to run various non-Apple and Windows operating systems on your Apple Mac including the various versions of Linux and Novell Netware as I understand.
So far the only issue I have with Fusion is that it doesn’t seem to allocate Ctrl-‘select’ properly. Ctrl-Shift select works perfectly though.
OSX Leopard experience
Sat 12 Jan 2008Filed Under: Apple Computers, Computers | Leave a Comment
Apple’s latest OS X is much smoother and outwardly better than Vista. The screen animations and general OS type interface is really easy to get used to. More telling was that I was trying to understand or learn how to do things like uninstalling applications and so forth. So far all you have to do is to put it in the trash bin and its all done. After years of Windows I thought is that it? Surely there must be more? What about hidden folders and files? It doesn’t feel right… Yes simplicity is a thing I will have to get used to!
Another thing I have to get used to is the keyboard. I guess its caused by the design of the keyboard. I’m used to pageup, pagedown keys, end and home keys and the two types of delete. When using the OS X the Macbook doesn’t have these keys and they also don’t work in the PC way. Thankfully when I’m running the virtual XP the keyboard works the same way. In fact when using the external keyboard it become just like Windows except the special function keys are called different names.
The best features is the Spaces function which allows you to have up to 4 different desktops. When I run XP it displays on a different desktop to the Apple applications. Switching between them is really easy. Reduces clutter and trying to find the right application window which is often hidden. The Stacks application is usefully too, working much like the Windows bar on XP but I prefer Spaces.
There are a few hardware notes to make firstly the Macbook is really quiet! Both fan and hard drive make very little noise! The only time it turned on was when I was running a heavy duty graphics/music app and iTunes, and XP in the various environments all at the same time. It resumes its near silence when running just XP even though I have lots of apps running within XP. The keyboard is feels cheap both external and the integrated keyboard.
VMware Fusion Review
Thu 6 Dec 2007Filed Under: Apple Computers, Computers, VMware Fusion | Comments Off on VMware Fusion Review
Since I can’t completely stop using Windows based programs so I have been trying SWSoft Parallels and VMWare Fusion to run Windows XP on my new MacBook. What I’m doing is generally called virtualization.
For the non-techies it means that I have Windows XP running along side or within Mac OS X Leopard. It runs like an application under OS X with all the functionality you’d expect from Windows XP. I also created a shared drive so both operating systems can use the same files if needed. The shared drive uses the OS X file system so no need to format.
In the end I chose VMWare Fusion because it seemed to work as well if not with a tad more polish than Parallels. The price was the same.
So far having the two run simultaneously has been fantastic. VMWare sets up everything needed to windows to work, including drivers for the monitor, sound card, network both wireless and wired. I didn’t need to put in new driver disks or anything – it simply worked!
All I need to do now is to install all the programs I used under XP and everything will be fine again.
I could have used Apple’s Boot Camp but that means I have to boot the computer with XP and I didn’t want to partition my hard drive or not be able to switch between Operating systems.
