Big Thumbs up for VMWare fusion!

[FreeStream]

I've been VMWare Fusioning the Bootcamp partition on both my MBP and MP and all I can say is...

WOW. It works *perfectly* pretty much.

Most useful app I have ever bought.

Useless for games but saves hassle of booting into Windows for quick CAD sessions, playing 1080p HD mkv files etc!

Deffo worth the £35 I paid!

 

[bimmerboii]

Can you tell me what MBP you are using? Also which version of windows do you use for VMWare? I only have Vista and I think my mbp might not be up to the task of running it. Will also be using it for CAD! Also trying to decide between VMWare or Parallels...

 

[rp2000]

I've been VMWare Fusioning the Bootcamp partition on both my MBP and MP and all I can say is...

WOW. It works *perfectly* pretty much.

Most useful app I have ever bought.

Useless for games but saves hassle of booting into Windows for quick CAD sessions, playing 1080p HD mkv files etc!

Deffo worth the £35 I paid!

Personally (if you have the space). A native VMware guest OS works much faster than when you bootup a Bootcamp partition in Vmware. Obviously there are benefits in sharing them.
Obviously there are benefits to the way you have done it (accessing the BC disk in OS X for copying files and the convenience of only having 1 machine). The drivers situation is also a bit messy for my linking as the one install has physical drivers and vmware support tools loaded, also no suspending of VM either

Obviously if you ever have to boot into Bootcamp then you need to keep the separate partition. For my needs I realised I did not need it after a while and just created 3 different VMs instead.

bimmerboil:

Vmware Fusion is fast, Virtual Box and Parallels are faster in my experience. All Vmware has over them is much better GPU support, but on a MBP that comes at the expense of firing up your fans to maximum. Also VMware lets you boot up your bootcamp partition as if it was a normal VMware guest (like the OP has done).

I have a 2.5ghz Early 2008 MBP (4gb ram but Vmware worked fine with 2gb before I upgraded) and it has run Vmware 1.x all the way to the current version without fault, bar the fans going mental when you use DX 9 mode or anything with intense DIsk I/O for instance if you are downloading from the VM and saving the output onto the Mac partition (that is a MBP thing, rather than a VMware thing tbh).


rp2000

 

[FreeStream]

Can you tell me what MBP you are using? Also which version of windows do you use for VMWare? I only have Vista and I think my mbp might not be up to the task of running it. Will also be using it for CAD! Also trying to decide between VMWare or Parallels...

June 2007 15" 2.4Ghz / 4gb / 160Gb 7200RPM MBP
Early 2009 2.66Ghz Quad / 6gb / 300Gb Veloci MP

Windows 7 Pro Build 7600 64-bit.


@ rp2000, it runs pretty much as quick as it does natively, so I can't see how the others could be that much faster

As for the drivers situation, the ATi drivers refuse to start in VMWare and the VMWare tools don't start natively and 3D performance in Bootcamp is unchanged so Im happy nothing is messing around seriously enough.

Having separate installs was a major PITA, especially when bootcamp sharing works so well.

As for the fans going mental, they have to, it uses a lot of CPU time when booting etc, temps go up as you expect them to so im not fussed by it at all.

Running two systems side by side is hard work you know