VMWare on the new Mac Mini?

[fruitpunch36]

So, my base model unibody Mac Mini is coming in the mail soon and I just wanted to know if it's a good idea to get VMWare for it? I need to run a few office programs in it such as Visual Studio 2010, and Office 2010. I also want to use it for gaming, so I want to install Windows 7 through boot camp and then be able to use Windows 7 on VMWare with the same partition. Is this possible? If it is, how will the performance be in VMWare and will Aero be supported?

 

[BlindSoul]

I would suggest on: http://www.parallels.com/

It's way better than VMWare for Mac.

 

[Kebabselector]

I wouldn't use VM's for gaming, also Aero might be a bit sluggish on virtual PC's (if it runs?).

VMware I know can boot off BootCamp - though not tried it with Windows 7

 

[SisterRay]

Have you tried virtualbox. Its free and quite good

 

[indg]

+1 for parallels. i've tried both (fusion 3 and parallels 5), and if it's performance you're looking for, go with parallels.

 

[Stan Mikulenka]

Hi,
I have both Parallels & VMware installed as you can see, the Parallels is a little bit faster:

 

[iGrant]

Have you tried virtualbox. Its free and quite good

I tried Virtualbox (ehh like a year and half ago) and it had a ton of promise but issues . . . really need to look into trying it again . . .

I would try the opensource and free alternatives before the paid version. Mostly because well . . . their free.

-iGrant

 

[fruitpunch36]

Thanks to everyone! I had VMWare 2 lying around somewhere and I upgraded to 3 and it works really great! I just need to get an extra GB of memory or 2 and it will be perfect. It's a little slow at times, but I'm not using it for much anyway. I wasn't really looking to try parallels because I've heard of lots of stability issues. I would like to try VirtualBox, but can anyone confirm that I can use my Boot Camp partition in it? Also, is it any faster than VMWare?

 

[Stan Mikulenka]

Hi fruitpunch,
I have the latest Parallels & VMware Fusion as you can see.
I find the Parallels less buggy, actually.

 

[belvdr]

Hi fruitpunch,
I have the latest Parallels & VMware Fusion as you can see.
I find the Parallels less buggy, actually.

Try going to the next version of Fusion. You are on 3.0 and 3.1 is out. I haven't found any bugs with 3.1 so far with 10 or so VMs loaded.