VMware Fusion is the best way to run Windows on MAC.
Recent question from a colleague just surprised me a bit. The question was if one could run several VMs simultaneously on a MAC. I said Yes I suppose, since I'm a Window guy and running VMware Workstation 7.1 at my lab. So I supposed that with VMware Fusion its the same. You can technically with no tweaks run several different OS at the same time on a MAC host.
But then, I actually realized that there is like small little gap between the guys who lives the “virtual life”… and the others IT guys. I thought to myself that the best way is to gather some informations about VMware Fusion 3.1 and there and do a blogpost about it so anyone who is not convinced yet will be (or might be..) after reading those lines..
VMware Fusion allows you not only to run simultaneously different OS, but also you have the possibility to run those VMs in different manners:
- In a window
- Full screen
- Or in a special viewing mode called Unity, which integrates the guest OS with your Mac's desktop.
So the Windows applications, like IE 8, or Office for Windows can be accessed just as if they were native OS X applications when using Fusion 3's Unity mode. They actually shows on you MAC in separate windows as if they were really executed on the MAC.
VMware Fusion 3's performance has improved in many areas over the version 3.0. Perhaps the best improvement is in memory use.
A quick quote from the fusion blog:
Improved Overall Performance – 35% Faster than VMware Fusion 3.0
– Reduced time for suspending virtual machines
– Faster Windows application launch times
– Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3
2D/3D Graphics Improvements – Up to 5X Better 3D Graphics than VMware Fusion 3.0
– OpenGL 2.1 for Windows Vista
– OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
– Greatly improved graphics performance
– Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
– Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
– Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3
Unity Improvements
– Minimizing Unity apps to the dock now shows app contents
– Works with Exposé and Dock Exposé
USB “EasyConnect”
– Easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
– Remember USB device assignment between Mac and virtual machine restarts
VMware Fusion 3 requires the following minimum Mac configuration:
- An Intel Mac
- 1 GB of RAM
- 700 MB free disk space for the Fusion application
- 5 GB free space for each virtual machine
- OS X 10.5.8 or later
