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VMWare Releases 3.1 Fusion Update - 35% Faster App Performance, 5X Faster 3D Graphics

Fusion will not update in "Mac" style

Something I hate about Fusion is that when there is an update you have to go to their website and find, along the many Windows programs, the one. Unlike a real Mac program where you click on update and you are updated, Fusion treats you like another Windows program out of many. This glaring error shows that Fusion has its heart in Windows.
 
Aha... when connecting disk or memorystick to a port, and vmware is running, a dialog shows. Now abel to choose if osx or win must have the disk connected. New to me!

vmio.png
 
I'm glad there is an arms race of sorts when it comes to these virtualization apps. We all benefit. I like Fusion over Parallels. It seems less invasive to my system. I like keeping my Mac apps and anything I run in Windows in virtualization completely separate. Windows user accounts and the general install of Windows are more similar to the pure PC experience with Fusion too.
 
ValSalva said:
I'm glad there is an arms race of sorts when it comes to these virtualization apps. We all benefit. I like Fusion over Parallels. It seems less invasive to my system. I like keeping my Mac apps and anything I run in Windows in virtualization completely separate. Windows user accounts and the general install of Windows are more similar to the pure PC experience with Fusion too.
Click to expand...

thats not to say that Parallels cant achieve that level of "separation". its entirely possible.
 
mgauss7 said:
Something I hate about Fusion is that when there is an update you have to go to their website and find, along the many Windows programs, the one. Unlike a real Mac program where you click on update and you are updated, Fusion treats you like another Windows program out of many. This glaring error shows that Fusion has its heart in Windows.
Click to expand...

Erm, no. Do you even own Fusion 3? It pops up when you run Fusion, tells you there is an update and you can download and install it by clicking a button. If it doesn't for some reason, you can check for updates in the menu.
 
What is the best VMWare configuration to use in my Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.3, 2.53 Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4Gb Memory. I'm virtualizing Windows 7 Enterprise.
How many cores should I assign to the Vmware? And how much Ram? I use Windows for Office applications.
 
windshear said:
What is the best VMWare configuration to use in my Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.3, 2.53 Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4Gb Memory. I'm virtualizing Windows 7 Enterprise.
How many cores should I assign to the Vmware? And how much Ram? I use Windows for Office applications.
Click to expand...

only for office? 2GB RAM max + 2cores would be PLENTY i feel.
 
Almost switched to Parallels

I started another trial of Parallels over the weekend since Visual Studio 2010 was slow at times under Fusion running Windows 7 with 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM. Parallels also builds NHibernate from source quite a bit faster than VMware. I'll have to try this update tonight and report back.
 
David Ormesher said:
I really hope it's faster… I was just complaining today that it was just hogging every resource my machine had, 2.66 MBP 4GB/Ram. I have very menial tasks for VM Ware and my experience with the older version of parallels was MUCH better than VM Ware.
Click to expand...

Much MUCH faster. 3.0 was a dog until this, especially with upgraded VMs. Faster than 2.x
 
try using a different drive

David Ormesher said:
I really hope it's faster… I was just complaining today that it was just hogging every resource my machine had, 2.66 MBP 4GB/Ram. I have very menial tasks for VM Ware and my experience with the older version of parallels was MUCH better than VM Ware.
Click to expand...
It is true about the performance of Parallels over Fusion, but with either one the best performance is found when you run the VM on another disk. The disk I/O is what kills perf. A FW800 external drive will give a much better experience with both. A Drobo or something like it works very well.
 
mgauss7 said:
Something I hate about Fusion is that when there is an update you have to go to their website and find, along the many Windows programs, the one. Unlike a real Mac program where you click on update and you are updated, Fusion treats you like another Windows program out of many. This glaring error shows that Fusion has its heart in Windows.
Click to expand...

Yes, because when i launched vmware fusion 10 minutes ago it did not prompt me that there was an update and asked me if i wanted to update. Oh wait, thats exactly what it did. And it also did not prompt me when i rebooted my windows installation that there was a new version of vmware tools and asked me to update. Oh wait, thats exactly what it did. At no point did i have to go to their website to download anything.
 
mgauss7 said:
Something I hate about Fusion is that when there is an update you have to go to their website and find, along the many Windows programs, the one. Unlike a real Mac program where you click on update and you are updated, Fusion treats you like another Windows program out of many. This glaring error shows that Fusion has its heart in Windows.
Click to expand...

Thankfully they updated this, so no more "searching" :)
 
That's a negative.

I'm an original Parallels customer from pre-release. I switched to VMWare Fusion because when something went wrong in Parallels, there was ZERO customer support. Windows 7 and Ubuntu have been running flawlessly on my Macbook Pro and Mac Pro. Yes, it would bog down the Macbook Pro if I had to many thing open, but that was only when having 5 different mac programs open along with Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 beta. VS will kill anything I think.

So, no. I don't work for VMWare and it's been GREAT for me.

I still have my Parallels license as well, maybe I'll give it another spin. I'm just deathly afraid of Parallels lack of support.



thesmoth said:
That's funny, because for both my girlfriend and I it takes 5 minutes to boot, and then it runs so slowly it is basically unusable.

I'm starting to think that anyone who says it's fast is just a shill for VMware.
Click to expand...
 
3.1 finally fixed the desktop unresponsive problem for me -- the one where the guest OS's desktop stops updating and I can't click or drag anything on the desktop. When it happens I also can't drag and drop directly between OS X and the guest OS.
 
jared_kipe said:
Based on the picture I would assume that assigning more virtual cores is something new in VMWare fusion. Just like to point out that Parallels has had this for a while. In fact I have two Win7 parallels machines running right now with 3D graphics and its amazingly fast for virtualization.
Click to expand...

It allows assigning more virtual cores but doesn't actually let you exceed the number of cores that you actually have. VirtualBox lets you use more cores than you actually have...
 
Release notes says graphics is 5x faster..... I sure do not see that happening when I run game (warcraft 3) in full screen mode. Cursor still lag for 0.2-0.3 seconds. game characters movement lagging, jittering. Game cant run in 32-bits colour - though it did not complain, the colour came out is more like 16 bits, or even 8-bits, I am not sure, so much noticeable artifacts.

the only noticeably difference is when running unity mode, the cursor flickering problem in application window is no longer there.

And every time I boot up i still have to re-adjust the resolution. it did not remember my resolution setting.

Conclusion : VMware still sucks in version 3.1.
 
Your going to laugh...

I gotta tell you.

I have been running XP with Fusion since it's beta days. Currently running it on my MBA 1.8 128SSD- 2GB ram obviously. I have 812MB allocated to the VM with 1 processor assigned.

My experience has always been very pleasant. I don't game on it mind you, but for my daily use in business- I run all day every day the following with no issues:

**Not running concurrently of course, but about 6-8 open at all times.**

Adobe 9.0 Pro- mac -(this gives me the spinning wheel of death printing of course)
Entourage
Excel
Word
PDF Pen
Mail
Address Book
iCal
SMB Server connection
Pathfinder
Safari
Preview

Windows:
I.E.
Calyx
Excel
Word
PP
RDC


2.0 version was very good. 3.0 was worse (almost bad IMO), and 3.1 seems to be very very quick- in line with the 2.0 days from what I can remember.

Resume/Suspend seems to take about 18 secs. for me, and Restarting windows in <1min to login.

Now, I am not gaming/running crisis, or anything of substantial video editing; but I have always been able to get along just fine with XP on fusion.

Does it scream like a 8GB MP, no- but does it work- and work very well? absolutely. Now, if I could just get that better specked MBA, I would be a happy camper.

FWIW.
 
Boot loader problems: Gone

I don't imagine this will excite too many people, but whatever they did in 3.1 has finally enabled use of my other Windows 7 partition. My wife and I need Windows for certain work applications, but she's software-limited to 32-bit while I get to utilize 64-bit. VMware couldn't properly process the bootloader which was housed on the 32-bit Win7 partition, and my 64-bit Win7 partition just crashed if I tried to use it. The problem is miraculously solved.
 
Hi everyone.

I upgraded to 3.1: all ok except iSight: has always worked fine but now not. Someone has the same problem? Any suggestions?

Sorry for my bad English ... Google Translator helps me! This is my first post ...!

MacBook Pro C2D 2.16 + SnowLeopard + Windows Xp Service Pack 3
 
tigres said:
I gotta tell you.

I have been running XP with Fusion since it's beta days. Currently running it on my MBA 1.8 128SSD- 2GB ram obviously. I have 812MB allocated to the VM with 1 processor assigned.

My experience has always been very pleasant. I don't game on it mind you, but for my daily use in business- I run all day every day the following with no issues:

**Not running concurrently of course, but about 6-8 open at all times.**

Adobe 9.0 Pro- mac -(this gives me the spinning wheel of death printing of course)
Entourage
Excel
Word
PDF Pen
Mail
Address Book
iCal
SMB Server connection
Pathfinder
Safari
Preview

Windows:
I.E.
Calyx
Excel
Word
PP
RDC


2.0 version was very good. 3.0 was worse (almost bad IMO), and 3.1 seems to be very very quick- in line with the 2.0 days from what I can remember.

Resume/Suspend seems to take about 18 secs. for me, and Restarting windows in <1min to login.

Now, I am not gaming/running crisis, or anything of substantial video editing; but I have always been able to get along just fine with XP on fusion.

Does it scream like a 8GB MP, no- but does it work- and work very well? absolutely. Now, if I could just get that better specked MBA, I would be a happy camper.

FWIW.
Click to expand...

That gives me hope. My XP VM experience is similar to yours. I upgraded my machine (2009 MBP w/ 4GB) about the same time I upgraded to 3.0, and saw an overall performance decrease. :( I've found that if I quit Safari before starting up the VM, things go much more smoothly. If I don't, it takes 5+ minutes to get to the point that it's responsive enough to use. Hopefully 3.1 resolves this. I'll have to give it a try when I get home.

I see on the VMWare site that there are benefits to XP that you only get if it's an XP VM created with 3.0 or later. Anybody know how you can tell which version was used to create the VM?
 
lollorenzo said:
Hi everyone.

I upgraded to 3.1: all ok except iSight: has always worked fine but now not. Someone has the same problem? Any suggestions?

Sorry for my bad English ... Google Translator helps me! This is my first post ...!

MacBook Pro C2D 2.16 + SnowLeopard + Windows Xp Service Pack 3
Click to expand...

Benvenuto! (Google Translator helped me too.)
 
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