VMWare Fusion 3 is out (new features linked) | Hacker News Reader

VMWare Fusion 3 is out (new features linked)

communities.vmware.com

29 pointsintranation25 comments

Got it. Booted my Mac into a 64-bit kernel. Win 7 64 bit ran painfully slow. Rebooted to a 32-bit kernel. Win 7 64 bit ran as good or better than it did on 2.0., but it still took forever to get going the first time while it updated VMWare Tools. It was fine after that.

So woop-de-doo for 64-bit host support. Pointless if it's so slow.

The VM environment is now split from the UI. Force-quit the UI and your VM still runs in the background. Start the UI again, and you can access the machine once more. This means that to kill an errant VM, you need to do it from Activity Manager or the command prompt.

UI in the menu bar is a welcome update. In full-screen mode, there is now a little bar on the top of the screen to access VMWare from the virtual machine. No more pop-over system menu.

Unity is still slow compared to coherence on Parallels, but Parallels doesn't support multi-monitors properly in Coherence mode, so VMWare still wins here. XP is probably better due to accelerated GDI+. I'm guessing the Windows 7 video drivers are still WDM 1.0.

If you are expecting a boost in performance, you probably won't get it. I sure don't notice one.

I was part of the private beta for Fusion 3. I have had nothing but a good experience with the new version. The UI has gotten much better and it seems like it uses fewer system resources in almost every case. The 3D graphics support is phenomenal for a virtual machine (I am also a virtual machine developer).

I will definitely be upgrading (although private beta testers do get 25% off purchase/upgrade price).

So after downloading it and installing it (and waiting for my trial email), I found out that:

- It lacks headless mode; and - It clobbers your 2.0x install completely.

If anyone wants to reverse the install like I did, you can still download the 2.0x series from here: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/fusion_2_0_6/JUBiZCVka...

You can try before you buy: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11004

Though I'm curious if it's easy to revert back to 2 after installing the trial for 3.

Any comparisons available between Fusion 3 and VirtualBox 3?

It all seems to be about Windows. I run a bunch of Linuxes in VMs, and it would be nice to have the Compiz desktop stuff to work in a VM.

Version 3.0 seems light years better than 2.0. Doesn't seem to lock up my mac instance any longer while booting.

Nevermind, its still slow as molasses. However... it no longer locks up my mac. This is probably something to be celebrated. I don't mind if windows is slow (for IE7 testing), but don't mess with my mac speed.

They're missing headless mode, which is a deal breaker for me.

Nothing in there stood out to me. Does this upgrade cost money? Why would I want to upgrade?

2 is especially slow for me. I'll probably upgrade just to see if it gets any faster. Pretty sad.

If you're disappointed with the quality/performance of Fusion 2, why would you pay more and blindly upgrade to 3 without actually knowing that it has measurably improved?

Either way, please report back after the upgrade. The 'new features' list isn't terribly compelling, but a genuine performance boost (on, say, a dual-core MacBook Pro, not just an 8-core MacPro) would be.

It works great for me. My system specs:

Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,1 Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache: 6 MB Memory: 4 GB Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz Boot ROM Version: MBP51.007E.B00

I can confirm that if I turn on the GT video card that I can actually play DoTA (Warcraft 3) in Vista at 1024x768 with no skipping. Obviously it doesn't balk at anything less complex (like Linux development and testing, which is what I usually use it for).

Edit: The support for multiple monitors is also greatly improved. I tend to like to connect my MBP to a second monitor, throw the VM on it, then fullscreen it. Works great.

Free 30 day trial

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11004

I agree. Maddeningly slow.

Pity we can't all chip in a few bucks to test the upgrade.

What are your hardware specs, and how much ram did you give the VM? I have a mbp that is a few years old with 4GB of ram, and fusion has never been slow. I did just upgrade to 3 and installed a Win7 image and it runs seemingly like bare metal.

One big feature is thatAero is supported in Windows Vista and Windows 7 now.

But only on a GPU >= nVidia 9400

I've seen a couple of reports that this limit was removed in the final release. Can anyone confirm this?

While I can't say for sure because I don't have a mac with a video card that poor, I can say that I don't see any such limitation spelled out in the beta copy docs or options.

According to Microsoft Aero will be enabled in Windows 7 if a DirectX 9 compatible GPU with a minimum of 128 MB of Video RAM is detected.

I installed Win7 earlier today and can confirm that it is not available on my old MacBook with GMA 950 GPU with 64MB RAM.

According to http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10959, the minimum requirements are either an ATI Radeon 2600 or an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M.

Did anyone try any d3d games on it? Maybe the latest valve shooter or something like it?

Upgrade price is $40 (from v1 or v2); regular price is $60.

Workstation 7 and Player 3 are out too.

/waiting for the mail with instructions to download...

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