VMware Fusion [OLD VERSION] Reviews

• Former Parallels user

  
  By A1BMKA4MZINX6H on 2007-08-24
  I am very impressed with this product. The virtual machine is running noticeably faster than the one I had running in Parallels, probably because of the multiprocessor support. Also I can finally use my x64 Windows XP Pro without resorting boot camp. Additionally, VMware is way more stable than Parallels. Parallels version 3.0 was crashing spontaneously at least once a day and the suspend feature would always result in blue screen of death on resume. I have yet to see a crash of any kind or a BSOD on resume with VMWare.
  
  

• MUCH better than Parallels

  
  By A3EMK6KNHP6Q8B on 2007-10-27
  Usage: I'm a web developer and graphic designer. My workflow involves using a number of tools that are specific to Windows and others that are specific to the Mac. I also use virtual machines for remotely controlling computers and supporting asp and [...] websites.
  
  Experience: I'm an owner of Parallels 2 and, as released, upgraded to Parallels 3. I was also involved in the Beta testing of VMWare Fusion. I have to acknowledge that the Beta versions of Fusion were not stable, however the release version was a tremendous step up from the Beta and significantly faster than Parallels. Parallels is fine if all you're running it for is IE6/7 browser support for IE specific website (i.e. quickbooks online). If you own Parallels and use it sparingly switching to Fusion is a waste of money. If you use audio, video, and graphic editing programs in your virtual machines you WILL notice huge performance gains running Fusion over parallels. There are numerous *free* appliances available from VMWare you can download, which work immediately and seamlessly with Fusion. Very nice.
  
  Summmary/Recommendation: If you're in the market for a Virtual Machine application VMWare Fusion is my recommendation. If you already own Parallels and use it sparingly there's no need to switch. If you use Parallels with processor intensive programs I recommend switching to Fusion as it is much faster.
  
  

• Works As Advertised - And Works Well

  
  By A20S4G1EXF2OM7 on 2007-12-11
  Like many MacAddicts on this site, I have a couple of PC based applications that I need to run apart from my Mac applications and didn't want to invest in separate hardware. I used Bootcamp Beta on my older iMac and found it to be OK but didn't like having to reboot to get to the other OS. Recently I purchased a new iMac 2.8 Mz with 4 GB of ram and wanted to see if VMware Fusion would provide me with the convenience of easily switching between Leopard (Mac) and Windows Vista Ultimate. The installation was reasonably painless and I had both systems up and running in short time. I loaded up my essential PC programs - MS Money and MS Publisher - and they worked like a dream. I did note that the Vista Aero effects would not work even when I optimized the system using the VMWare tools. Not a big deal. I then installed a PC game, Call of Duty, and could not get it to run effectively. I dropped back to earlier PC games such as MS Age of Empires and Command and Conquer and they also failed to perform adequately. I assumed it was a Vista thing and installed a separate copy of Windows XP which ran really well but just not games. Curious as to whether it was a virtualization (likely the MS/VM video drivers) versus hardware issue, I un-installed the Windows systems, re-based the Leopard system, installed Bootcamp and then Windows Vista Ultimate. After assuring Microsoft that I was not using my copy of Windows on multiple machines they gave me the secret code with authorized my Vista copy on my Bootcamp partition. When I brought up Vista through Bootcamp I found it to be very quick, Aero effects worked and more importantly, my PC games all installed and ran flawlessly. Now I am considering reinstalling VMware Fusion on the machine along with Windows XP to allow the easy switching back and forth between OS's (via VMware Fusion) and still have the capability of playing my *essential* PC games on the same machine via Bootcamp. In summary, I like VMware Fusion and it performs very well - just not with my PC based games.
  (December 26, 2007 Update) I did install VMware Fusion on the Leopard partition and am running Windows XP and it is really running everything well with the exception of games. I love the ease of dragging pictures and files back and forth from WinXP to Mac and vice versa with no problems. I have PhotoShop in the Mac side and Microsoft Publisher on the Windows side and it is really painless editing jpegs and then dragging them into Publisher. Running very stable on both sides of the partitions. Still have Windows Vista Ultimate on the Bootcamp partition and it really handles the PC games well but not convenient for switching back and forth between PC and Mac OS's - reboot requred for every change. One curious feature I noted is with the two Seagate external backup drives I have attached to the iMac - one FAT 32 for Windows and the other HTFS format for the Mac. When I am running Leopard I can see and access both drives but when I start up VMware Fusion and bring up Win XP, the FAT 32 drive disappears from the Mac desktop and shows up on the WinXP side only. As soon as I suspend the VMware Fusion the FAT 32 pops up on the Mac desktop again. Not a problem, just interesting. I would suggest that if you are installing VMware Fusion on your Mac that you create enough space in your Windows partition to accommodate your future needs as well as your current ones - the methods I have seen for expanding partition sizes are fairly complex. Still really happy overall with this software.
  
  

• Beware CPU race condition

  
  By A1D6QRPYDAB4RJ on 2007-11-06
  I installed WindowsNT using both CPU's in my iMac (2.4G) via VMWare Fusion. Running WindowsNT with VMWare Fusion pegged both Mac CPU's while showing only 1% use in the WindowsNT Task Manager. If you have a laptop, this will superheat the Mac and you'll get lots of fan noise. I did get good performance of the Windows OS with VMWare Fusion and VMWare Tools allowed the mouse to easily pass between Windows and Mac.
  
  My real complaint here is the utter lack of support from VMWare. I paid for a one year one incident support license which they simply dishonored. I could not get phone support or email support. Their voice mail system sends you to email/web support and their web support sends you to voice mail. There was no way to enter this condition into their support system. There is however plenty of discussion on the web about this problem and the lack of support by VMWare.
  
  Parallels has a much better support system that lets you send a bug report to them from inside their VM product, similar to Apple's bug support. I have been able to run WindowsNT successfully in the Parallels product with good stability and performance. Parallels at this time however only support a single CPU VM.
  
  Anyone running VMWare should check their Mac CPU usage. You may get good performance but it may come at the price of your computer's longevity. The temperature on my Mac's CPU's with VMWare was consistently above 130 degrees F. While Apples tests their iMacs at 100% CPU over a long time I simply didn't want my Mac running that way 24 by 7.
  
  UPDATE: VMWare finally got back to me after a month and reported that WindowsNT will NOT run properly in Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) mode (2 CPU's). I was told to reinstall from scratch and to never go into SMP mode. The issue will not be corrected in the future but will be documented "better". I haven't tried reinstalling since that takes about 4 hours for me and Parallels continues to run fine.
  
  

• You may have to call Microsoft for another activation code for this

  
  By AMHIBGQ1RM65A on 2007-08-31
  I have tried Parallels and VMware Fusion and feel that the VM product is stabler and faster. Drivers in a Macbook Pro with Parallels took over 25 minutes to load and because previously I had the demo version of VMware Fusion I noticed a significant slowdown running Parallels, MAC-OSX 10.4 with Vista Home Premium. (by the way Vista rocks in a Macbook Pro with Fusion and have had no issues). VMware fusion is a great product! Unity, one feature of the program, will have your Windows programs running on your Mac like they are for the Apple.
  **One problem** that I had and noticed others had when I researched it is: if you run your Boot Camp with VMware (did it to me also with the demo of Parallels), your XP or Vista will *not* be activated if you check your computer properties in the virtual drive (Windows) and counts down the 30 day. **Microsoft** is aware of this and you need to call them on. My boot-to-Windows-only-from-start was unaffected. MS fixed by phone.
  Because these products (Fusion & Parallels) load proprietary drivers Windows thinks it is another install in VD.
  This is more specific to those that have a running Boot-camp and use it before making it a virtual drive with the 3rd party programs.
  
  
• Awesome... can only get better!
  By A3TIFI95KNJRRW on 2007-09-25
  Having finally crossed the border into MAC country after being a PC citizen for many many years its not so easy to give up the affliction to some of the PC programs so I picked up VMware Fusion & let me just say that it lets me have the best of both worlds. I read many reviews on Parallels & Fusion but decided to go with Fusion. I believe both programs are equally good. The installation was smooth as can be... I loaded up Windows XP Pro & voila! I had Windows purring away on my MAC! The best part of it is that the experience of using windows is actually more pleasant with the 'suspend' feature of Fusion which lets u literally take a snapshot of all the running programs under Windows & put it in a 'suspend' mode so the next time, one can just 'resume' where you left off!
  
  
• Very happy!
  By A3ELSU1SHRX09Y on 2007-11-02
  I tried Parallels (still have a copy, unused) and I preferred Fusion. Everything works wonderfully, and Windows 2000 is incredibly snappy on my Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Mac Mini with 2 GB of RAM, and with Tiger (OS 10.4). No complaints, except that trying to get the Boot Camp partition to run in Fusion is futile. I don't even attempt to do it anymore.
  
  Other than the Boot Camp problems, it's really working great for me!
  
  Note: Fusion worked very well on my previous Mac Mini (Intel Core Duo 1.66 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, OS 10.4) but a bit slower. Windows 2000 ran fine as soon as it was up and running, but switching back and forth from Mac OS to Windows was a bit draggy. But still, it was quite workable. Windows XP was not so great, though, so while it will run in an Intel Core Duo, it's not really a fun experience unless your Mac has at least 2 GB of RAM. But 1 GB *will* work with XP. Just slowly.
  
  
• Set up was a nightmare...
  By ACVGH6J8GWEH6 on 2007-09-21
  After reading several reviews I decided to order this software and after 2 days of frustration I gave up. I am pretty computer saavy so I am at a loss to explain my difficulties but will describe them for you in case you have similar problems. The setup would only get so far and then would freeze which would force me to force quit the application and I would have to go through the set up again. Other times the set up would complete but when I tried to suspend it, it froze and I had to force quit it again which would bring me back to the install. After doing this (literally) 15 or 20 times I gave up. I dont know if its a compatibility issue or some quirk in the software but with a company with as good a reputation as VM I would have thought that their support would have been better. After sending 3 emails and never getting a response and 2 frustrating phone calls I called it a day. I'm sure that for some this is excellent software but I couldnt recommend it based on my experiences.
  
  
• Great promise - but not quite there yet
  By AJPH8OQSWKR7K on 2008-05-05
  Vista refugees like myself were stunned by Apple's decision to switch to Intel processors -- making the dream of a multifunction machine that could handle both Mac graphics and Windows business applications a reality. The Mac's (OSX 10.5; Leopard) rocksolid Boot Camp application made this easy ... although it requires time-wasting rebooting to switch back & forth between operating systems.
  
  Products such as Fusion or Parallels take advantage of Intel's multi-core 'virtualization' feature that allows (more or less) peaceful coexistence of the two, presenting a Windows interface on the Mac desktop. It works surprisingly well, although rough edges made me return to the sturdier and faster, albeit more effort-intensive, Boot Camp. I'm certain that by version 2 the program will come closer to expectations. Fusion's greatest weakness is its bewildering and poorly worded manual; for instance, make sure (rather than 'maybe') to finish up Windows installation with the Mac installation disc, so as to get the proper Mac-to-Win translation drivers such as for networking, modem, sound and Bluetooth. The XP version SP2 (soon to be SP3) is recommended over Vista because it is more compact.
  
  The ugliest problem - preventing me from further experimentation - is Microsoft's intrusive 'Windows activation'; on re-installing from Fusion to BootCamp I went through hours of hassle with a distrusting foreign service rep, who barely spoke English, and couldn't seem to grasp that I was reinstalling XP on the very same machine (but on a different hard drive). Never again! The software maker ought to reach some accommodation with Microsoft, or the product will not survive this monstrous roadblock.
  
  
  
• It just works-
  By A358HRKIIEP6HS on 2007-11-05
  I purchased Parallels 3.0 and experienced a major crash, losing my entire virtual machine. I'm not sure what I did wrong that could have resulted in the crash, but it caused me a lot of grey hair and wasted hours.
  
  I decided to try VMWare's 30 day trial, and then purchased it from Amazon. I haven't experienced any crashes or other buggy behavior with it. I do miss some of the Parallels slickness such as having the windows toolbar appear in unity mode, and being able to span multiple monitors. That was extremely slick and intuitive in parallels. I tend to not use unity in vmware as a result, and I go crazy copying and pasting between mac and windows because the ctrl/command keys are different between the OS's. If you run in Unity mode, the mac keys are mapped to windows functions. I wish this worked outside of unity mode. 1.1 is supposed to fix some of this, but no dual display support. Other thing being fixed (thankfully) in 1.1 is the ability to eject a cd or dvd using the eject key.
  
  Overall, its a very powerful tool, and has been very reliable. Works fine with Leopard too. Just wish some of the UI was as slick as Parallels.
  
  
• Horrendous experience with set up and installation
  By A20OD9AA7O58P6 on 2007-10-06
  It took seven days and endless hours to reach the correct customers service. The actual company that produced this product kept on referring us to the master company and vice versa. Finally, they refused phone help and emailed, requiring that we start over from square one. After additional endless time, they never could help us install ANY print driver. Really anticipated this product but was extremely disappointed. I personally believe that Apple needs to develop their own product and make their excellent customer service available. Otherwise, what a nightmare!
  
  
• Flawless
  By A23CI4YSY7M64H on 2007-12-26
  I first looked at buying Parallels. After reading the reviews I decided to go with Fusion. What a pleasant surprise. I asked for this as a present. I dreaded installing it. You always wonder how smooth things will go. What I hate more than anything else is reading instructions on how to install things. Now don't get me wrong, you will have to set aside a couple of hours to install this, but the computer is doing all the work not me. I have a MacBook 2.2Ghz OS 10.5. I also have 4GB of RAM installed. I allocated 1GB to Window's XP. I threw in the disk and hit install. After it's all in, there is an update to VM Fusion 1.1 That's a 172MB download. That takes awhile. Again it's doing all the work, not me. Installation of Window's XP was also easy and effortless. Next step it was all running and running well. I have to run a program that interfaces with my company's 45 year old computer system. Now let me tell you that the people with Window's computers have a 50% failure rate of trying to use this program to access our company's computer. This program ran flawlessly on my computer. It operates fast and perfectly. One more thing, shutting down Windows and quitting VM then restarting is very fast. It takes about 20 seconds to boot up from a complete shutdown. I couldn't be more happy.
  
  
• Got the Screen of Death
  By A3R70LZLO9KO9T on 2007-09-07
  I installed vmWare Fusion on my MacBook Pro last week and immediately witnessed a slowdown, not only in Fusion but in every application while Fusion was running. Example: It usually takes three bounces on my dock for Excel to launch. With Fusion running, it takes nine. This is simply not acceptable.
  
  But it gets worse. I was using Internet Explorer on my virtual machine - fair enough, right? - when all of a sudden I get one of those crazy Windows error messages with the "End Now" button. Literally five seconds later I get the Mac screen of death - that one that turns your whole screen dark gray and barks at you in five different languages, telling you to hold down the power button to turn off and then turn on your computer.
  
  Well, I tried that and - long story short - my Mac is now at the Apple store for repair. Got an update from them this morning: The data on my hard drive is a total loss. It's all gone. Sounds like Fusion completely overwrote the directory on my hard drive. And the Apple store guy told me this was not the first case he'd seen.
  
  If I sound relaxed, it's only because the better part of a week has gone by. I am, in fact, angrier than you can possibly imagine. Lesson learned: I should have stuck with Parallels.
  
  
• Great product!
  By A2BMDFYMNPB9HL on 2007-08-29
  I recently purchased a Macbook mid range (which I love), and unfortunately I have a couple of necessary software programs that require Windows. After researching all the options for running windows on Mac I decided to try Fusion. Less than one hour after Fusion arrived I had Windows XP installed on my Mac. It works perfectly! Two weeks and no problems so far. I would prefer to not "need" Windows, but since I do I am very thankful for Fusion.
  
  
• Not Ready for Real World Use
  By A2G4W6WXVDCGAG on 2007-09-03
  I was using Boot Camp and saw that you can use it with Vmware. Well, after about 10 minutes of using it inside Fusion, it crashed my Boot Camp partition. Then when I tried using it again in Boot Camp, it did not work and was corrupt and totally unusable. So frustrating! I also tried just using a virtual machine inside the program and it crashed on me AGAIN. Looks like Fusion is just not ready for real world use. I might try again in a year once they have the bugs out.
  
  
• I'll wait for Version 2.0, thank you.
  By A1GCTSQTNFU68O on 2007-09-07
  Not impressed. I thought vmWare Fusion would meet my needs, what with the company's reputation, but it seems they have a lot to learn in Mac software development. This one's a turkey, at least for now.
  
  I finally figured out how to get external drives to show up on the Windows desktop, but it took me literally an hour of fiddling and a call to tech support with an additional hour and a half of hold times. Then my USB memory stick just summarily dismounts without me ejecting it. Makes no sense.
  
  I still can't get Fusion to recognize either of my printers - and I know I have the right drivers because they work on my PC which has the same exact Windows install. And if you want to install any other peripheral - like say my credit card swiper that I wanted to use with QuickBooks - you can just forget about it.
  
  I've concluded that a Mac running Fusion is a virtual island. It's terribly frustrating. I don't have any experience with other programs, but I'm definitely going to try Parallels next.
  
  
• Switch to Mac, painlessly
  By AQ12AXIJOXJ93 on 2007-09-18
  My girlfriend recently moved from a desktop PC to a very sexy MacBook Pro. It was a present from her parents, so it wasn't really a planned out migration.
  
  As such, she found herself in a tough spot with a big investment in Windows-based software (Microsoft Office, etc.), and an investment in using the Windows user interface.
  
  I got her hooked up with Fusion, and it's really help her. She works for a Fortune 500 firm that uses, of course, Microsoft Outlook, so in order to harness the mobility of her laptop, and do email in an offline state rather than using Outlook web access(she takes the train to work), we got her hooked up running Outlook in a Windows XP VM.
  
  She'll probably get around to buying Office for Mac whenever Microsoft decides to finally release it, but in the meantime, she's able to work on Excel docs and Powerpoint presos using her XP-based Office software.
  
  The point is, she's really enjoying her MacBook Pro, and still able to use Outlook and didn't have to buy another $300 of software on top of what she already has.
  
  We looked at Parallels too, but the product is just really unstable. It freezes a lot, and acts more like a Windows application than a Mac application. She switched to Mac for usability and stability benefits--not to have more blue screen of death experiences.
  
  So we heartily recommend Fusion. I'm probably going to get a MacBook Pro in the near term, and I'll be getting a Fusion license at that time too, because I have about $1k in Windows photoediting and video editing software that I don't want to have to re-buy for Mac.
  
  
• better program compatibility with SAS
  By A37ULGSVTS8NK5 on 2007-09-09
  The main program that i want to run on windows is SAS. It is usable on parallel, but not well supported. (sometimes some problems, and some feature not supported.) After i tried it on fusion, it was pretty easy for me to decide to go for fusion, because it looks like it is running natively (other than the speed, common for all virtualization programs) If program complicated as SAS can be so well supported, i have reason to believe fusion has better program support in general.
  
  
• VM Ware on Linux and Windows user
  By AMFFAB06VBSE8 on 2007-09-20
  I've been using VMWare Fusion now for about a month on a 9 months old MacBook, and I'm very impressed and extremely satisfied. I have no experience with Parallels, so I can't compare the two. I've been using VMWare on Windows and Linux for many years now as part of my job as a Software Developer, so I expected VMWare Fusion to perform well, but still I was positively surprised by how well it performs. The Unity feature that allows running my Windows apps directly on the Mac OS X desktop works very well. But the key feature for me is the ability to actually run my BootCamp partition in VMWare while in Mac OS X. This gives me the flexibility to choose to run Windows natively whenever I don't need Mac OS X, and to run Windows inside Mac OS X whenever I have that booted up (which is most of the time).
  
  
• VERY EASY TO INSTALL!
  By AFIR57I2Y901O on 2008-01-15
  I installed this program yesterday and it works better than I expected. It will let me switch back to Leopard or drag photos from Windows to Leopard with ease. I purchase it so I could use some of my software and programs I had on my PC that are not available with apple. I even can use mail programs I had on my old PC on Windows XP. So far no conflicts between the two programs at all.
  It is working exactly as described on the internet and I am very satisfied with the results. Like I said so far I give it a 5 star rating!!!!
  
  
• Beware if you plan to use your Boot Camp partition
  By A1JDFMITN5UBG9 on 2007-11-09
  I could not get Fusion 1.0 (or 1.1) to install and run my Apple Boot Camp 1.4 partition of Windows XP Home (SP2), on either my up-to-date MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro. I spent 10 hours working with VMware tech support but they were no help and it was a complete waste of time, and endless Windows Activations. I then downloaded and installed the Parallels Desktop 3 trial and it ran the Boot Camp virtual machine perfectly. It was up and running in about 4 minutes flat. I plan on returning Fusion and buying Parallels. Fusion might be ok to install a new virtual machine, but beware if you plan to use your Boot Camp partition, at least until VMware sorts out the crinks.
  
  
• Great product
  By A3G2BXUALO94XA on 2008-02-20
  I'm not qualified to write a feature-by-feature review of Fusion, but I've been using it since it first came out (and Parallels before that, until version 2.5) so I have some VM experience on the Mac.
  
  In short, Fusion does everything I could every want. I use XP with Fusion on almost a daily basis and it's never let me down. It's fast, runs every app I have ever thrown at it, utilizes both cores, plays nice with OS X with respect to shared devices (like printers, DVD drives, USB peripherals, etc.), doesn't hog resources, and offers a very seamless workflow in Unity mode.
  
  It's also nice that VMs created with Fusion run in WMware Player on Windows boxes, though that's a feature that I benefit from more at work than home.
  
  If it's this good now, I can't wait for 2.0. Fusion has truly mitigated all of the reasons I had for not buying a Mac, and all without cumbersome rebooting (though I keep a Boot Camp partition for the occasional game, as native 3D is still superior to the support in Fusion and Parallels).
  
  
  
  
• Best Virtualization Solution Without A Doubt
  By A1DIGS6KYNWA04 on 2007-10-12
  I have been using VMware Workstation for about a year and a half now, primarily on Linux (Ubuntu) hosts but also on Windows hosts. I have used Workstation primarily to host Linux guests, with Fusion the focus has shifted to the Windows BootCamp guest primarily for webdev testing. I loved Workstation, and Fusion brings essentially the same product to Mac, with optimizations for running a Windows guest.
  
  The user interface of Fusion has been revamped from the ground-up apparently, and I think it is overall an improvement. The main benefits of the new UI show up in the "Unity" view. In this mode, the running windowed applications of a Windows guest show up in the Mac OSX context, without being confined to the guest console. Fusion even shows the icon of running Windows apps in the Dock.
  
  Integration with Boot Camp is excellent. The only issue I have experienced is that dual-booting into BootCamp/Windows allows you to use a later version of DirectX that VMware does not support. This means that DirectX apps will crash if you attempt to run then in Fusion (unless there is some fancy system profile setup you can work out of which I am not aware). This only applies to those of us dual-booting for our computer games. If you are using VMware's experimental DX8.1 support, you can just install the DX8.1 drivers and you should be good to go.
  
  The interface to Fusion is very streamlined. The bulky one-window UI of Workstation (and Server Client) gives way to a variety of smaller widgets (the Library, the Launch Applications widget for Windows Unity, and seperate console windows for each VM). Unfortunately VMware also streamlined out multiple snapshots and snapshot trees (seems you can have one snapshot per VM). This is not a feature I use very often so it seems a fair trade for the price difference between Fusion and Workstation. You can even run Fusion headless if that is your thing (by booting a VM from the command line and killing the UI PIDs).
  
  Installation note, with Boot Camp you will need to call Microsoft to re-activate your copy of Windows. Otherwise the process was relatively painless. Porting over my Linux VMs was also painless, those have been copied and ported from Linux hosts to Windows hosts to other Linux hosts and now to Mac Hosts, which is one reason I love virtualization so much.
  
  VMware also has a strong discussion forum on their website. I have not tried their Customer Support numbers, but there has not been a problem I could not solve (well, at least the the definitive answer to) from their forums.
  
  
• One Sweet Product.
  By A39WE4FNJLR0BK on 2007-10-29
  Having tried the other Windows-on-my-Mac options, Fusion simply rocks. Unity - which let's you treat each windows "window" like any other mac app (sits in your dock, move around like other mac apps, etc) is great.
  
  Only downfall - seems that there are some networking bugs to workout still. I'm running Windows XP Pro on my mine, and there are definitely some bugs when trying to connect to your local network vs. wan connections. In my case, in bridged mode I connect to the internet fine but not the local network.... in NAT I connect to the local network and not the internet. Argh!
  
  When all is said and done, though, this is a slick program that really expands the Mac platform in a very natural way.
  
  
• Great way (and instructions) on how to "clone" your windows to your mac
  By A1MVQ4QBSOABIH on 2008-07-31
  I bought the VMWare fusion and I thought I had to buy not only a new windows xp/vista, plus all the additional programs to make the change. Well it happens that after reading some reviews and some research on my side it is somewhat easier to transfer your WHOLE pc to your mac, WITHOUT having to buy the windows xp copy, nor the windows office...
  
  1. Go to VWMare and download the vmware converter
  2. Install the converter in your computer PC and create a clone. This might sound difficult, but the VMware website has a self explanatory video that tells you how to do step by step. Basically it is the equivalent of creating a "zip" or a "backup" of your existing pc in the "vmware format". Again the website has a video with step by step instructions.
  3. Once you have saved your PC, you log into the mac.
  4. You install the VW Fusion.
  5. You "import" your saved old PC - that is the vmware format.. and bingo... you suddenly your old pc (and ALL the programs it had) runs faster and better in the mac.
  6. You are set!!!
  
  It is a great program indeed...
  
  After all is setup, don't get frustrated because you suddenly think you must open the WHOLE windows XP. There is a way to create an icon for the applications you want to use from your PC in the MAC, very smoothly.. it is called UNITY. There is another video that tells you how to do it, is pretty self-explanatory. Basically when your press UNITY icon and run let's say your Outlook, the Outlook Icon pops in your mac Dock.. in that moment press with your mouse and select Show in Finder. Is that easy!
  
  
• Fusion the best choice!
  By A2CJSMPFASDT73 on 2007-12-28
  I am a professional programmer, and have used both Parallels and VMWare Fusion. Fusion is clearly the better product. It is much more stable, performs much better, and simply works.
  
  I use Fusion on a Quad Mac Pro with 4 GB RAM and a bunch of hard disks. I currently have Vista Ultimate on Boot Camp with a corresponding VMWare machine. Both work perfectly. (I did have XP Pro, but recently upgraded to Vista [did in place upgrade, worked perfectly, no issues], and find that Fusion supports Vista very well - there is the double activation issue, but that just take a simple phone call to Microsoft - just be sure to say you are using Vista only on one machine, the one you bought the software for).
  
  I also have a pure XP VM and a Ubuntu workstation/server VM, and it works like a charm. Perfect platform for web development - run a complete server on the Ubuntu VM, and live on the Mac, with Windows available when needed.
  
  Fusion has not let me down, unlike Parallels. Fusion seems much more professionally done, while Parallels seems a bit like a big hack.
  
  If you like to play with different systems, and haven't tried Ubuntu Linux, give it a try. Doesn't take much work (you can download a working version ready to go from VMWare!), and is a bit fun to play with. If you're a developer, then the Mac Pro / VMWare Fusion platform might the the best development platform ever built!
  
  
• Does exactly what I wanted it to!
  By AX74L612G6TPW on 2008-01-18
  Windows runs great, it was really easy to install. I have Leopard so I actually didn't even use the CD that came in the box, just the serial number after downloading Fusion 1.1 which is made to work with Leopard. Easy install was just that - EASY!
  
  Only two things confused me slightly, so here is the info in case you have the same questions:
  
  1. 1.1 asks you whether you want your virtual machine to be read only or read/write. If you pick read only windows can still save/write files, it just can't access or write to the home folder on your mac - giving you better security. You can still swap files back and forth between the operating systems even if you choose read only.
  
  2. Windows works straight away after it goes though all the automated installing, but you still have to click the activation button in the right bottom corner, or your programs such as media player will say your copy of windows is bootlegged. After I activated all was fine!
  
  Really so happy overall!! and you can't beat this price, especially with the rebate! Highly recommended.
  
  
• Works exactly as advertised
  By A3UDMOC92G5SC8 on 2008-06-01
  Use with:
  
  Macbook pro penryn 2.5GHz
  Leopard 10.5.3 with bootcamp
  Windows XP home SP2 OEM (upgraded to SP3 after installation)
  
  I was concerned initially that this wouldn't work with an OEM version of XP when using it with both bootcamp and Fusion, but when I followed a very precise order of installation (which I found online), it was easy and relatively fast (the most time-consuming process was installing XP itself).
  
  Once I installed Fusion, I was able to update to the most current version of the software online for free.
  
  Here are the steps I took for a relatively painless install of XP:
  
  1) Create the boot camp partition and install Windows XP.
  2) Start up Windows XP with Boot Camp and validate.
  3) Do all your patching and updating.
  4) Boot into OS X
  5) Install VMware Fusion and VMware tools if not installed already
  6) Create a new image using the Boot Camp partition as the source
  7) Startup Windows XP in VMware
  9) Reboot the Windows XP in VMware
  10) Validate Windows XP in VMware (this has to be after VMware tools is
  installed and the image was rebooted. You may have to call the number for phone activation--the automated system will ask you to enter in a series of many, many numbers into your computer, which then should be adequate to validate the software again)).
  11) Shutdown Windows XP in VMware
  12) Shutdown OS X
  13) Startup Windows XP using Boot Camp
  14) Validate one last time if needed (this last step wasn't necessary for me).
  
  Now I can use my Mac as a hybrid machine that can either run OS X, Windows, or both at the same time. I can drag documents and files from one system to another pretty seamlessly. It's pretty sweet.
  
  
• Mixed Feelings
  By ASDAM2TIJ0YJJ on 2008-07-06
  I tried this product for a business project where I needed to use Windows XP & Vista. The system I used was an iMac Penryn Intel Core2Duo 2.8GHZ, 4GB Ram, 500GB Hard Disk, OS 10.5 Leopard. Installation was easy, but neither operating system would stay activated. Each time we started it up it would require reactivation. We own our licenses, but if we have to reactivate each time we start the virtual machine, it becomes annoying and also raises red flags to Microsoft. Support seemed non-existent. When we actually did get support it was almost a week after we submitted the claim. We ended up returning this to Amazon and used an actual PC instead for the project.
  
  
• Fusion vs. Parallels
  By A2K83ZAPZZVM0N on 2007-11-05
  I've been running Parallels since I got my first Intel Mac over a year ago. Parallels generally performs outstandingly. The only hitch is its lack of access to video memory and an upper limit of 1.5GB of PC memory. Fusion breaks these limits and allows one to run Google Earth, AGX, and other applications that demand more that 64MB of video memory.
  
  A specific case of something running better under Windows is the online college courses I'm taking. WebCT is a heavy user of Java and on the Mac I get out of memory conditions all the time. Running Firefox under XP is totally painless.
  
  With Fusion I'm finding that I really can pick which application I want to run under which operating system without a second though. My overall workflow is much smoother and much greater than would be the case with either OS X or Windows alone.
  
  

• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition FULL VERSION with SP2
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP2B for System Builders [OLD VERSION]
• Apple iWork '08
• Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional FULL VERSION with SP2