VMware announces Fusion 3 with more than 50 new features - Page 2

of VMware products. My day job consists of managing many ESX servers, and using a Mac I must run a Windows VM so I can run Virtual Center tools.

Fusion was very buggy for me on my unibody Macbook. High CPU, very slow unity, occasional OS lock-ups. I tried Parallels 4.0 the latest version like 4 months ago and is way better than the current version of Fusion.

For starters you get the Windows tray icons on the menu bar. The icon on the Dock changes to a start menu when in Coherence (unity mode for fusion), so you can access it even when native Mac applications are selected. With Fusion you have to choose an active Windows app to get the menu option, so you open another Windows app from the start menu while in unity. Parallels uses less CPU and memory and the Coherence mode is faster. Parallels supports simple cloning and cloning to a template much like VMware Workstation and ESX. Cloning is great if you need to make multipe VM's of the same OS. With fusion you are left with coping the vmdk file, and creating a new VM. The sharing options between VM and OS X, files, folders etc is just way better in Parallels, I get a disk icon on the OS X desktop for a running VM, that I can access. Parallels supports Snow Leopard and a 64bit Kernel.

We have been beta testing Fusion 3.0. It is better than 2.0, way better. The windows start menu on the OS X menu bar is huge for me. The performance of Unity is better as well. The sharing options are lacking still. The cloning options have not changed.

I will probably switch because we are such fans of VMware products over all. If I were not a user of other VMware products I am not sure I would. Aero and gaming do nothing for me. I only run Windows in a VM because I need VMware tools or MS AD tools.

What VMware really needs to do is make some native Virtual Center tools for OS X, so I dont have to startup a Windows VM at all.

Sorry Aero is a drain on a system. Its pure eye candy. On every real Windows box I have used, especially Vista, if you go into advanced settings and change it to maximize for performance, Windows will drop Aero, and all of the GUI features like dragging a box on the screen while drawing it, instead you get a square frame, also things like menu shadows, or menu animation all gets turned off. What you get in return is a very fast UI. This is on real Windows machines with video cards. On a VM you get a stripped down virtual video card, that is less powerful. I am assuming that Fusion 3.0 ups the power of the virtual video card but still Aero will tax it. Its does not GIVE you anything to have aero on except for a fancy looking neon GUI.

...and you don't think the dock reflections in Leopard and SL tax the system more than happened in Tiger, or Expose doesn't come at a cost? Of course Aero is eye candy, so is most of Aqua... but the virus analogy is a poor one.

All GUIs slow down with additional animations to an extent, but there becomes a point where the processing power you have makes this impossible to perceive. I have Windows7 installed on BootCamp on my MacBook 1.0 (Core Duo and GMA950) with Aero, the same machine can run it on Parallels with no Aero and I also have it installed on a Phenom II x4 @ 3.6ghz with 2x Radeon 4890 1GB cards. There is virtually no performance difference in the GUI between the MacBook in BootCamp and the Phenom. I can post a video sometime to prove this if you wish.

You're Windows bashing for the sheer hell of it. Vista's performance issues are nothing to do with Aero (your GPU can either do it or not), they're to do with I/O issues deep in the Kernal (resolved in Win7 by the look of things).

Actually that's not quite true anymore. It adds additional functionality that isn't there in the non-Aero gui.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero

The GUI is plenty snappy even on my low end Mini with integrated graphics using Aero. General CPU Utilization is between 1 and 2 percent. Perfectly acceptable.

Agreed. His post reeks of trolling.

Here's a hint. On my PC with Windows 7 64bit RTM I turned off the service:
Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service

All fancy window graphics went away, and my gaming frame rates (at least initial testing in Need For Speed: Shift) had a nice boost. Less "laggy" feeling. Made a huge difference in playing Need For Speed: Shift at 1920x1080p 2xAA 0xAF Shadows:Medium, Car Detail: Low, Track Detail: Medium. Using ATI Radeon 4830 512MB.

Will be trying with Call of Duty 5 this evening after work.

Edit: To clarify, this is on a bonafide PC install not in Boot Camp or virtual machine. Just suggesting turning off the eye candy as well.

I think the "eye candy" in Leopard and Snow Leopard is more intelligently coded than Vista. Vista is a pile of garbage anyway, compared to Windows 7 64bit. I don't think Aero in Windows 7 slows things down much in normal usage, but in certain gaming situations (I haven't fully tested a wider range of games yet) turning off the service "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager Service" seems to boost frame rates.

PM me if you have any troubles and I will attempt to help you. Most times it is something simple, but often confusing for the first-time user.

The Aero window manager isn't even doing anything during a full screen 3D game. The Window Manager was changed in Vista to suspend Aero in the background once you enter 3D Exclusive Mode. There is no impact and your just repeating old performance issues from the XP days.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ce/default.asp

In case you don't feel like reading, I'll summarize:
Quite frankly, we were shocked by these results.

We decided to ping AMD to get their take on things. We weren’t certain if the performance results we were seeing with Aero Glass were due to changes in the new driver model, or if the GPU we tested was just so powerful that Aero Glass didn’t affect it. Here is the question Brandon asked AMD and this is the response we got back from AMD’s Andrew Dodd:

FiringSquad: We ran some benchmarks with Aero Glass on and off and noted no performance difference when using Catalyst 7.1! Normally under an OS you see a slight 3-5% performance hit when you turn on the eye candy, but that wasn’t there under Aero Glass which was definitely surprising. Do you think the new driver model helps Aero Glass performance or is it something else?

Andrew Dodd: Basically (pretty much because of the new Vista driver model) the Vista OS just suspends Aero in the background, (once you enter 3D exclusive mode it would be a waste of GPU resources to keep running Aero). So that’s why there’s no performance impact

I would suspect that OS X probably does something similar.

LOL his post reeks of trolling because he bashed a windows feature? Quite ironic, actually.

You think it's appropriate just because he's bashing Windows? Why would you want to encourage that sort thing? What if he was bashing OS X, 'just because it was OS X'? Neither is appropriate.

That may very well be true; Core Animation etc are embedded deep into the gut of OS X. Aero is effectively a DX9 application, just like any game. BUT... the requirements are actually pretty low (if a GMA950 can do Vista Aero on 1650*1050, then it can't be that taxing). Not only that, but my MacBook now chokes in Expose with anything more than 7 or 8 windows open, thanks to the way SL now tries to cache each window in VRAM. I have to say, and I am no Windows apologist, that Win7 performs better graphically than SL on my aging MacBook... indexing, I/O and video playback though is better under OS X.

Besides, all that is a different conversation... he originally compared Aero with a Virus, which is just the ranting of the worst of our fair community.

After reading the thread so far, and looking at so many great reports for Fusion3, I'm still wondering something: Windows requires activation and one major issue to me with Fusion2 using Bootcamp partition so far, is that every time you switch back and forth between BC and FUSION, it requires to re-activate. This doesn't seem to be an issue reported in the thread.

How goes Fusion 3 about this? Is there a known workaround otherwise?

Jean-Luc

I'm wondering that myself. Did this used to happen with Vista? I have to wonder if this is because Microsoft is bundling their VirtualPC solution with the higher end Windows 7 builds. They may not want to make this easy for other Virtual solutions.

Sorry, but I'm confused by your comments above. You don't need BootCamp if you are using Fusion. You just fire up your Mac, then fire up Fusion. Both run together, so you are not really switching between the two. So, once you have activated Windows in Fusion, you should be done with the activation process.

I know there are folks out there that still insist on using Fusion in a BootCamp partition, but I have never understood why. Seems like it defeats the whole intent of virtualization.

The question is not if this is usefull or not (re: using or not Fusion on BC). The question is for those of us that do, for our own reasons (and each has its own reasons), then does it still require activation any time you launch from one side or the other (virtualized in Mac or native boot with BC)?!?!

On such use I personally have, is I develop "gaming" related application in Windows, and I need to run these on native hardware.

There is a current issue that when you boot into Boot Camp and register you're copy of Windows, if you then launch your Bootcamp partition in Fusion, you will be asked to register it again. If you then turn around and boot into Bootcamp, it will ask you to register again.

You get the idea. Any time you switch between the two, you are forced to validate Windows.

I read the post here and on other sites a few years back when i wanted to take the dive and try to use this software for my PC clients and for testing apps and websites and I have had a better experience with Fusion and I actually never even used BOOT CAMP mode just installed as a virtual machine and it works GREAT!!! i can't wait for the new version to launch...

PCMACMANNY@gmail.com

(if you need an IT guy in the nyc area contact me there...