VMware Fusion 4 for Mac OS X Lion Increases Windows Support
Sep. 15th, 2011 by Dave Courbanou
If you’re a Mac-toting IT admin, VAR or MSP, it’s very likely you can’t get away from needing to run Windows or Windows applications. That’s okay, because VMware Fusion 4 is here, and it’s been specifically designed to run on Mac OS X Lion, with a nice list of other new enhancements. Read on for the update and whether it’s worth your coin …
VMware is boasting more than 90 added features in VMware Fusion 4, all of which are fully optimized to take advantage of OS X Lion and the second-generation multi-core Intel Core CPUs found in Macs. Nice little tweaks such as adding your Windows applications to OS X Lion’s Launchpad and Mission Control enable power users to use all the multitasking productivity features without compromise. Running Windows applications outside of the VM box — a.k.a. “Unity mode” — has also been improved.
Alongside application tweaks also come optimizations for hardware, including updated support for utilizing Mac graphics cards inside virtualized Windows applications. Fusion 4 boasts a 2.5 times boost over the previous version. If virtualizing Windows isn’t your thing, you can virtualize Linux and, thanks to Apple’s more relaxed virtualization stance, even virtualize your existing copy of OS X Lion and Snow Leopard inside VMware Fusion 4.
The price tag until 2012 is $49.99, which is a nice value, considering that the typical price is $79.99. But, if you bought VMware Fusion 3 on July 20, 2011, — or anytime thereafter — you can upgrade to Fusion 4 for free. For VARs and resellers working with VMware, you’ll be happy to know that just like with Fusion 3, volume pricing, corporate licensing and more are available to you.
Right now, VMware’s biggest competitor in this space is Parallels Desktop for Mac, which is currently at Version 7 and at a very firm $79.99. VMware’s price drop might represent an effort to combat its rival, especially since Parallels Desktop for Mac came a bit earlier in 2011 than VMware’s latest offering. I’ve used both products and it’s hard to recommend one over the other, since they often play cat and mouse with speed benchmarks and feature sets. The best plan for a user on the fence would be to download each trial and find out which program virtualizes your needs better. But as long as there’s a $49.99 price tag, VMware Fusion 4 is definitely a good deal while you can get it.
Read More About This Topic
Share This Post
Posted In: The VAR Guy
Tags: Parallels | VMware
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Subscribe: RSS Feed
Tags: Parallels | VMware
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Subscribe: RSS Feed
Don't miss Charlene O'Hanlon's weekly columns...
I installed VirtualBox on my Mac. VirtualBox is *FREE*, and does 3D acceleration for Windows *AND* for Linux (important for the new Unity and Gnome Shell desktop environments, which do not work unless you have 3D support). I wouldn’t play games in it, but it’s running Windows 2008R2 just fine (developing Java software for that platform) and Eclipse is just as snappy as native. Fedora 15 also performs quite brisky, almost as briskly as on the Dell desktop sitting beside it running Fedora 15 natively. In my view, the only reason to buy VMware Workstation 8 / Fusion 4 (same basic product) is if you are developing virtual machines to run on ESXi servers — otherwise the free VirtualBox produce does everything that most people need from a virtual environment. (And did I mention it’s *free*?!).
“otherwise the free VirtualBox produce does everything that most people need from a virtual environment.”
Except drag and drop or cut and paste.
Uhm, cut and paste works just fine with VirtualBox, where do you get that it doesn’t? I’m currently doing Java software development on a Win2K8 VM and I assure you that I’m cutting and pasting with abandon between Mac OS X Lion and Win2K8. You do have to install the VirtualBox tools first, but you have to install the VMWare tools too to get cut and paste working between Windows and MacOS on VMware Fusion, so(shrug).
Dunno about drag and drop, I’ve never had a need for drag and drop support between my VM’s and the Mac, since I share my Mac drive with the VM and I don’t store any actual data in my VM. So I can always drag and drop a file, because it exists on both sides, I just have to open a Finder / Explorer window pointing to it on both sides. You may be correct about drag and drop support. I wouldn’t know because unlike cut and paste, I don’t use drag and drop and never have, even back when I was running Fusion 3.
In other words, your “information” about cut and paste may have been true at some point in time, but is no longer operative.