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VMware Fusion goes Beta

Posted by Zonk on from the toys-for-christmas dept.

Rahul writes "Fusion is a new VMware product that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows and Linux in virtual machines on Mac OS X. The Mac virtualization market is presently dominated by Parallels and it will be worth watching if VMware can gain the mindshare despite its late entry. Ars Technica reports: 'The nice thing about VMWare Fusion is that it already supports some of the stuff that the Parallels Beta2 released yesterday just added, such as USB 2.0 and most USB devices, CD/DVD drive support, and drag-and-drop between environments (unless the guest environment is Linux, that is). You can also run multiple Fusion environments at once or assign multiple processors to your virtual machine(s), if you're into that sort of thing.'"

4 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Multi-CPU support? by jarich · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Parallels runs great and the windowed mode is awesome... but if this version of VM Ware actually supports both of the cores on my MBP, it might make a huge performance improvement.

    I've downloaded it and have a VMWare image downloading...

    The Parallels tools have things like image import that VMWare is missing though.

    --
    Agile Artisans
  2. It's compatible with the other VMWare products! by MarcQuadra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I really wanted was compatibility with VMWare's other apps, and they delivered. I can justify a Mac at my desk if I can author sessions that eventually live up on our server farm.

    Interoperability is HUGE when it comes to virtualization. There's a lot of value to being able to 'build' a server in my bedroom and upload it to bigger metal when I get to work. Parallels didn't have that, VMWare does. I'm going with VMWare.

    --
    "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  3. I want a gaming designed VM by Cadallin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When is somebody going to do this? Hell, when is somebody going to fork Dosbox and turn it into something usable? Dosbox has an immense amount of cool technical work in it, but the UI absolutely unusable. Why can't we have an actual Virtual Machine environment that can boot DOS from a disk image, and provide excellent sound support, and CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA graphics support? And *gasp* how about joystick support on par with most NES, SNES, etc emulators? Furthermore, how about some sensible CPU speed scaling? Like every other emulator for other platforms has available.

  4. Re:Snapshots? by 0racle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Right now, no it doesn't. They also won't comment on upcoming features so you don't know if it will or not. If it doesn't though I believe that it will be the only one of VMware's virtualization software that doesn't so that's pretty unlikely.

    It seems to pretty much be VMware Workstation on OS X so I would expect it to have pretty much the same features eventually.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."