VMWare Fusion Review

We’ve definitely given Parallels software it’s fair share of coverage but we’ve left VMWare’s Fusion out in the cold. I finally got a chance this week to sit down, install and use Fusion. Things didn’t start off too well, but over the course of my use, it did get smoother.

To test out Fusion I am using Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 on a Mac Pro 2×3.0GHz Intel Xeon, with 3GBs RAM.

When I first started up Fusion and ran through the setup, it locked up and refused to do anything. This happened at the point where you choose your installation source. I was using the image method. Fortunately, the second time it worked flawlessly.

The Windows installation process went very quickly; much faster then I can remember any Windows install in Parallels. During the install, my OS X system did seem to slow down significantly, though. The whole install process took about 15 minutes, which is quite quick for Windows. One thing I did enjoy about the Fusion installer is that you can input your username, password and product CD key and it will autofill all of that information during the install process. It also automatically installs the VMWare tools (mouse, video, etc drivers…) right away, while Parallels makes you manually do that.

Something that I didn’t seem to be able to choose was how much RAM I wanted to allocate to Windows. I have a feeling if I had chosen the more advanced setup option I would have been able to configure a few more options like RAM allocation.

VMWare’s Fusion supports the ability to use multiple processors, while Parallels doesn’t. For someone like me (and most any Intel Macintosh user), this is a great feature. This feature pretty much just gives you more power to the Windows system. You can set it to use up to 2 processors, so people with dual, quad or 8 core machines will really make the most of it.

The rest of the settings are very similar to Parallels, although the Sharing Folders feature doesn’t seem to work the same way it does in Parallels. You can access your Mac files from Windows, but it doesn’t look like you can access your Windows files from OS X. While it’s not a huge issue, it’s a nice ‘convenience’ feature.

Both Parallels and Fusion include features that let you work in Windows without it actually looking like you are. Parallels calls this feature Coherence mode, and Fusion calls it Unity. Both work and act the same for the most of it, but Parallels seems to have it working a bit more smoothly. This isn’t to say Unity is terrible, but it just looks and feels a lot smoother in Parallels.

I didn’t test much software in Windows (mostly because there’s a lack of it around here) but the Windows system itself seemed quite stable and ran quickly without any hiccups. VMWare also includes an option to run 3D games and supports DirectX 8.1. It also requires a bit of hacking around in the Fusion preference files so that the mouse works correctly. Fusion also supports about 1/4th the amount of games that Parallels does. Parallels also supports OpenGL while Fusion does not.

It seems most common devices like USB flash drives, CDs and DVDs or an external drive work fine. I am not sure how well (or badly) it works with PDAs or other devices, though.

While you could do a lot more in-depth testing with this application, I think for the simple home user who needs to run a few Windows applications, VMWare is a good solution. It’s very easy to set up and use. I think if you’re looking to run games in Windows, you should use either Boot Camp or Parallels.

Overall, I would actually choose Parallels or Boot Camp to Fusion. All of them are solid products, I just don’t think Fusion is there yet. It’s definitely coming along, and probably within the next 2-3 versions it’ll be a really great application.

There is a trial version of Fusion available to download.