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| VMware Fusion | 
 enlarge | From: Smith Micro Software Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: $79.99
Buy New: $55.98
You Save: $24.01 (30%)
New (18) Used (1) from $55.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  183 reviews
Sales Rank: 8
Format: Cd
Platforms: Mac Os X, Macintosh
Media: CD-ROM
Batteries Included: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.5
MPN: VMFUSMBX2
Model: VMFUSMBX2
UPC: 717103140372
EAN: 0717103140372
ASIN: B000UK3GVA
Release Date: August 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Unopened! UPC intact
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| Customer Reviews:
 Much better than Parallels 3.0 November 9, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I used Parallels from version 1.0 to 3.0 and found it to really slow down my MacBook Pro. Fusion allows me to use my Mac programs without a performance hit.
 Beware CPU race condition November 6, 2007
42 out of 58 found this review helpful
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.
 It just works- November 5, 2007
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
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.
Excellente!!! November 5, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have been a born Microsoft citizen until last few weeks. I bought iMac. Loving it!!! But missed the BLUE screens of Microsoft and hence bought VMWare on trial. I installed the VMWare. No issues in installation. Able to connect to work thru VPN. Absolute no hassles!!! It rocks!! I am able to enjoy both worlds.
Fusion vs. Parallels November 5, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
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