VMware Fusion
VMware Fusion is the most seamless way to run Window on your Intel-based Mac. VMware Fusion allows you to run more than 60 ×86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X, without rebooting.
VMware Fusion is built on VMware's rock-solid and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.
It's mature virtualization platform makes it the only virtualization product for Mac OS X that allows for SMP virtual machines (up to 2 cores assigned to a virtual machine), up to 8 GB of memory in a virtual machine, and allows you to use the full 16 GB available in a Mac Pro.
You can see a demo on YouTube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIApJMzGzDQ
Required OS: 10.4
Tags:
virtualization
, emulation
, virtual
, machine
, windows
, linux



21 Opinions
I too have licences for both Parallels v.2 and VMware Fusion but prefer VMware. I didn't upgrade Parallels to V.3 because I found Fusion to be faster in loading programs.
I like Fusion a lot. But its the only app I have installed right now that has the propensity to take down my ENTIRE f*$Ying computer. Like basically lock up the entire machine. Happens regularly, but not frequent enough where I dont take a gamble booting it up every once in a while. Sure pisses me off though.
I have no idea if this is Apples fault or Fusion. Isn't OSX supposed to protect computers from rogue apps? Anyways, I'd recommend againt having anything valuable open when launching Fusion.
When its working (95% of the time), it works awsome and the usability is top notch.
I have licenses for both VMware and Parallels, and compare them head to head with each major release.
Other than a period after VMware 1.0 final was released and Parallels 3 was in beta, Parallels has always been faster to resume and restore, and has a much more polished user experience.
I tried the recent VMware 2.0 beta, and other than the new printer setup tool, it doesn't surpass Parallels in any way I can find. Some comments here about how Vista runs better on VMware, but can't say; Vista is too painful on either product IMHO.
So once again, I'm sticking with Parallels for now. Nice to see the two companies push each other, though!
Faster then the "other" virtualization solution for Mac. Unity is a ver nice way to integrate both world
Not perfect, but I am happy with Fusion. An occasional lock-up (requiring a reboot as Force Quit does not work) and failure to release external USB drives back to OS X are the many problems. However, those are rare. Unity is simply superb. For those of us who, for whatever reason need to keep one foot in the Windoze world or who want/need same computer access to other flavors of UNIX, it is hard to beat.
I love this app! Set-up is straightforward and easy, and Unity rocks.
Fusion works flawlessly. Booted up my Boot Camp with no troubles (Parallels didnt work and the error message pointed to a broken link).
The UI is amazingly simple. I've been running my image in the background for the last couple days with no noticable performance problems at all on my mac apps (Macbook Pro). The Windows apps seem to run native speed.
Highly recommended
Wow. the betas were spotty but the 1.0 release is just outstanding. I was running Parallels forever and recently started wondering why my machine was so slow: disk thrashing, pageouts, swapping, even with 2GB of ram! Turns out Parallels just can't manage memory. Fusion has no such problems and my machine is glassy smooth again. Kudos!
Parallels completely hosed my Boot Camp partition (requiring a complete reinstall of Windows, an exquisite torture), put a whole bunch of weird software network interfaces in without asking me first, and peppered my /System and /Library folders with all its 8.3 filenamed junk.
VMWare Fusion worked off the boot camp partition beautifully, ran as fast, put all its stuff in just 1 or 2 locations, didn't hack my network drivers, and overall seemed to be a much better product.
VMWare for the win!
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