Do I even need bootcamp? Will Fusion do?

[apcpa2000]

I just received my VM Fusion software and my windows disk should be arriving this afternoon, and I am confused on if I need to even to install bootcamp, or everything i want to do will work from windows. The following is the software i will run:

1) Quicken for Windows (I think would be more than fine on Fusion)

2) Cryptmagic and Blackbery Desktop (I think this too would be more that fine on Fusion)

3) Symantic VPN to go into my files on my work server and possible use a installation of MS Outlook in conjunction with my VPN. My main question is around the VPN. Will the virtual machine share the interenet connection with the MAC OS? (I use a cable modem.) I was really hoping that it would that way I could go in through the virtual machine and just drag and drop any documents I need over to MAC OS.

Any help and clarrification on this would be greatly appreciated. After a weekend as a convert i want to be booting into MAC OS every time.

Thanks.

 

[Guy Incognito]

I don't know about the Symantec VPN software specifically, but I use Cisco's VPN client on a WinXP VM to access a remote network. I'm not sure what you mean by your question, "Will the virtual machine share the interenet connection with the MAC OS?." If you're asking whether MacOS can tunnel via your Windows VM's VPN connection, I don't know.

What I do is this: All my files live in the Mac's Documents folder. That folder is shared via Fusion to be accessible to the XP VM. I can then, in Windows, copy files to and from the remote network to my Mac. If this is what you're asking, then you should be all set.

Also, I run Outlook in the Windows VM; it uses the VPN connection.

I do not have BootCamp installed.

 

[hankolerd]

Well if you don't have Leopard, I wouldn't do it through boot camp, because the beta ends in 28 days. If you do have Leopard, Boot Camp is already installed, and windows drivers are already burned on the Leopard disk, in which case, I would go ahead install windows on a partition through boot camp. That way, if Fusion can't handle something that you want to do, you can just reboot into windows to complete the task. I think Fusion actually works by launching your already partitioned install of windows. I am not for sure though...that is what I did when I tried the trial of it.

If you are still using Tiger I don't know what to say for you, because I don't know if Fusion installs its own partitions or not..I imagine it does...You probably know though, since you have the software.
But if you have Leopard, do it through Boot Camp, it seems to me to make much more sense.

Edit:
When I used Fusion it was still in beta form, but I was somewhat disappointed. It did share my internet connection with Windows, but it also reset my mouse settings to my windows function keys whether I was doing something in OS X or Windows in Fusion. Also Fusion took over my optical drive, so when I put in a cd OSX couldn't see it, but Windows could, which was annoying to me, because I was trying to install OSX software. Seems like it took over the iSight as well. Hopefully that was just trial bugs though.

 

[nospamboz]

I am confused on if I need to even to install bootcamp, or everything i want to do will work from windows.

Suck it and see. Create a VMware Windows VM, but don't activate it
immediately. Then install your necessary software and see if it works.
You have thirty days before you need to activate Windows. If it
doesn't work, trash the pure VM and try the boot camp VM route.

You can configure how the network is shared. Default is NAT, where the
VM gets its own LAN IP range, and the VMware software acts like a DHCP
capable NAT router. This works fine for me for most things. There's
also bridge mode, which I'm no expert on, but I believe your VM
simply become another "computer" on the same LAN network as the
host system.

The VMware Fusion community forum is a valuable resource for this
sort of info.

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/fusion

 

[webgoat]

Edit:
When I used Fusion it was still in beta form, but I was somewhat disappointed. It did share my internet connection with Windows, but it also reset my mouse settings to my windows function keys whether I was doing something in OS X or Windows in Fusion. Also Fusion took over my optical drive, so when I put in a cd OSX couldn't see it, but Windows could, which was annoying to me, because I was trying to install OSX software. Seems like it took over the iSight as well. Hopefully that was just trial bugs though.

you just click on virtual machine menu and disconnect any of those devices from the vm and you can use isight, optical drive, or other usb devices in mac os x... just as simple reconnecting them