Does Anyone Use VMware Fusion To Run Windows?

[stefanjames]

Before I buy VMware Fusion 3.1 I wanted to try out their 30 day trial version. I've heard this is one of the best softwares to run Windows. Now my question is does anyone who has installed VMware have problem with your Macbook running very slow?

If so, any ways to solve this?

 

[MacDawg]

I use Fusion and it runs very well
What is your configuration?

You can also try Parallels or VirtualBox (free)

Or you can run natively with a BootCamp partition

 

[MacForMeOneDay]

I use VMWare and have been for 3 years. I run on an iMac 2.8 Extreme core 2 that is 3 years old.
Only issue I have when I do run it, is RAM. I only allocate 512M to Windows. It seems to be fine for Windows, and keeps my OSx RAM availablility to a usable point as long as I don't do to many other things.

With that said, you should describe why you need to run windows to get more accurate suggestions. I run Windows to be able to run some Swim team software that is only available on Windows.

My Mom runs Windows under VMFusion to be able to run her Sewing software. Same experience.

 

[willieva]

I run xp on a new 13" mbp and windows 2000 on an old plastic imac, both using vmware. No problems since the machines have enough memory. Originally my imac had 2gig and ran slow when using vmware. Adding another gig solved that problem. I had 4 gig in my mbp and was able to run xp no problem. Also having a linux vm running slowed things down until I increased the memory to 8gig.

So if your macbook only has 2gig in it, you'll probably find things run a bit slow. Put another 2 gig in it and you should be fine.

 

[durhamj]

Not a direct comparison, but I run VM (Win-XP) on a 3.06 C2D iMac. It ran slower than I liked with 4GB, but going to 8GB was a nice improvement.

 

[filfortugno]

use bootcamp

Before I buy VMware Fusion 3.1 I wanted to try out their 30 day trial version. I've heard this is one of the best softwares to run Windows. Now my question is does anyone who has installed VMware have problem with your Macbook running very slow?

If so, any ways to solve this?

I have the recent 15" mbp i7 with 8gb of ram running windows 7 with parallels 6 and it is dead slow and i only allocate 2-3 gb of ram. I'd avoid it if i were you.

 

[SaSaSushi]

I have the recent 15" mbp i7 with 8gb of ram running windows 7 with parallels 6 and it is dead slow and i only allocate 2-3 gb of ram. I'd avoid it if i were you.

Why would your experience with Parallels 6 have anything to do with his decision to buy VMware Fusion or not?

I run Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit with Parallels 6 both with a VM as well as to access my Boot Camp partition and it is quite speedy (I allocate 2GB of my total 4). I expect it to become even speedier when I upgrade to 8GB on my i7 iMac soon.

I used to use Fusion but switched to Parallels when V5 came out because it performed better for me and I preferred its features. V6 has been an even bigger improvement over 5.

 

[santaliqueur]

I run Windows XP in Fusion on an iMac i7 2.8 GHz with 4GB ram, 1GB to Windows. It's enough to run GTA3 using Steam in full resolution. Pretty good performance.

 

[Garen]

I run Fusion 3.1 on my 2007 Mac Pro with no problem what so ever, it is very fast and reliable. Now I seldom use bootcamp thanks to Fusion.

 

[robert05au]

I am running VMware 3.1.1 with win xp pro sp3 with out any issues apart from windows ones which are normal even on a PC.

I will be trying vista or win 7 ultimate soon.

 

[iDude1]

VMware AOK

I've been happy running XP Pro under VMware 3.1.1 for 18 months on a 13" MacBook w/ 2GB RAM & 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo. No speed problems unless XP starts downloading patches, scanning for viruses or other big RAM hogging jobs.

 

[naskies]

I've been running VMWare Fusion on a white 13" MacBook and mid-2009 MacBook Pro with Win XP for several years, and more recently Win 7 64-bit.

I found that with 2 GB of RAM, both OS X and Windows ran noticeably slower than with OS X alone. Upgrading my RAM to 4 GB, and then 8 GB, made dramatic improvements in speed - everything was more responsive.

However, upgrading to an SSD (Intel X25-M G2) made the most dramatic improvement of all. Whereas doing anything disk intensive in Windows using a standard HDD would bog down the whole system, with the SSD I can install Windows patches and apps in the background (with frequent automatic rebooting) with no noticeable impact on the rest of the laptop (OS X apps).