Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion

[maestrocasa]

My new MBP is on the way and I can't wait. Unfortunately, I am going to have to run Windows XP sp2 on the mac, for some work-specific apps. I'm looking for helpful hints and suggestions on how best to install and run bootcamp and fusion. I understand that fusion can utilize the bootcamp partition, so I suppose I should install that first. What can you recommend for making the installation go smoothly? recommended minimum partition size? Known bugs/issues with fusion and/or bootcamp? My only experience with virtualizing windows is from VirtualPC running win98, and it was pretty awful. Sure hope this is better! Thanks!

 

[maestrocasa]

and more questions...

What about file format? NTFS or FAT? does fusion have a preference?

and... I was just reading the BootCamp instructions, and it says that OEM discs of Windows aren't recommended. but that's what I have. Any known issues?

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

What about file format? NTFS or FAT? does fusion have a preference?

and... I was just reading the BootCamp instructions, and it says that OEM discs of Windows aren't recommended. but that's what I have. Any known issues?

I have a MBP and I just installed both BootCamp and Fusion last week. I installed BootCamp first, with a 10GB partition (same deal for me, just need it for a couple programs at work). I used the FAT32 format so that i could read and write to the Windows partition while booted into OSX. And then I read about Fusion and gave that a shot, using the BootCamp partition. It's worked perfectly so far, i'm quite impressed with the program and will probably buy it, depending on what Apple does for BootCamp in leopard. I'm not sure if Fusion somehow lets you exchange files between Windows and OSX if you use the NTFS format, but I know with FAT32, it allows drag and drop no problem.
Fusion is a really cool program, i love the interface, it all works with exposé and everything.

 

[invasian]

i have my boot camp partition formatted as NTFS...you can drag and drop using VMWare Fusion...

When I installed bootcamp, i remember that the drivers didn't really work for the graphics card or the ethernet controller...ended up finding those myself, but maybe apple updated them by now...

 

[Gilfanon]

I'm in the same position as the OP- about to switch to a MBP and need to use a virtualisation program to access Windoze apps- pardon the noobish question, but is the partition only required for the OS? i.e. if I wanted to install a couple of games so that I could play them via Boot Camp, would I need to create a partition large enough to accommodate the game install files, or is there shared drivespace between the Windows and OSX operating systems?

Also, I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer to the question of whether VMWare has its own version of Coherence in Parallels? It's exactly the kind of functionality I'm looking for and I'm considering Parallels over VMWare because of it, but from what I've read on these forums VMWare seems to get higher performance marks... Any views from anybody out there?

 

[72930]

VMWare has Unity, just like Coherence