Vm Fusion Yes Or No?

[chrmkr]

I just bought a new iMac (love it) to replace my nine year old one. May it r.i.p.
Anyway, I'm a woodworker and want to install a CAD program, but most are for PC.

I was about to have vista xp home installed, when a friend suggested installing vm fusion as well. Said I wouldn't have to restart when going from Mac to PC plus the other features...sounded great.

But reading "Windows On The Mac" and all the problems, I'm not sure it's a good idea.

I'm no computer whiz and would rather avoid a lot of frustration and lost time trying to deal with technical issues.

Having said that I would appreciate feedback on whether it's a good idea. Or should I simply install Vista and restart while switching from one to the other?

Thanks,
Larry

 

[kfordham281]

If Vista works as well as XP with Fusion then you shouldn't have any problems. My opinion is based on XP, which works great. My suggestion would be to install XP or Vista via bootcamp and then run that through Fusion. That way you can boot into it or run it though a VM while in OS X. You get the best of both worlds.

 

[chrmkr]

If Vista works as well as XP with Fusion then you shouldn't have any problems. My opinion is based on XP, which works great. My suggestion would be to install XP or Vista via bootcamp and then run that through Fusion. That way you can boot into it or run it though a VM while in OS X. You get the best of both worlds.

Thanks for the reply.
I misspoke though. I meant to say XP Home Edition.
I am clearly in way over my head here, and need some help with the terms.
What is bootcamp and what is it's function?
Isn't the purpose of having VM to allow you to use both?
Or do you mean that I could use both at the same time?

 

[JNB]

Boot Camp is Apple's utility to partition and ready the hard drive to install Windows as a bootable, native operating system. VMWare "virtualizes" the Windows OS, allowing you to boot into the Mac, launch VMWare, and boot Windows within that (in addition to almost any other OS you can think of).

By installing Windows under Boot Camp, then installing VMWare Fusion (and pointing to the Boot Camp installation), you then have the choice of booting natively into Windows when you need every bit of the hardware to run the OS to its maxium capacity, or if you just need to run a "lighter" Windows app, while booted into the Mac side, launch Fusion and boot Windows, running it side by side with the Mac OS.

 

[kfordham281]

Boot Camp is Apple's utility to partition and ready the hard drive to install Windows as a bootable, native operating system. VMWare "virtualizes" the Windows OS, allowing you to boot into the Mac, launch VMWare, and boot Windows within that (in addition to almost any other OS you can think of).

By installing Windows under Boot Camp, then installing VMWare Fusion (and pointing to the Boot Camp installation), you then have the choice of booting natively into Windows when you need every bit of the hardware to run the OS to its maxium capacity, or if you just need to run a "lighter" Windows app, while booted into the Mac side, launch Fusion and boot Windows, running it side by side with the Mac OS.

Pretty much exactly what I would have said! XP works very well with both Boot Camp and Fusion.

Boot Camp: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html

 

[chrmkr]

Boot Camp is Apple's utility to partition and ready the hard drive to install Windows as a bootable, native operating system. VMWare "virtualizes" the Windows OS, allowing you to boot into the Mac, launch VMWare, and boot Windows within that (in addition to almost any other OS you can think of).

By installing Windows under Boot Camp, then installing VMWare Fusion (and pointing to the Boot Camp installation), you then have the choice of booting natively into Windows when you need every bit of the hardware to run the OS to its maxium capacity, or if you just need to run a "lighter" Windows app, while booted into the Mac side, launch Fusion and boot Windows, running it side by side with the Mac OS.

Got it "Chief" thank you.
But I still have this question.
How dependable is VM?
I have read several post in another thread about it crashing and causing other problems. Can you comment on that?

 

[richard.mac]

^ a virtual machine has virtual RAM and a virtual hard drive which reside on your real RAM and hard drive respectively. so its software on hardware which is much more reliable.

 

[JNB]

Got it "Chief" thank you.
But I still have this question.
How dependable is VM?
I have read several post in another thread about it crashing and causing other problems. Can you comment on that?

Gotta look out for the troops, y'know?

Never had a single problem with a VM session, either internally or to the parent OS. I run some apps that rely on different databases (SQL and Oracle) simultaneously, while giving the VM'd OS only 1GB of RAM and a single core of the CPU, and it's as fast (and more stable) than on my "real" Windows box, a company-issued Dell. For me, it's been as bullet-proof as anything I've ever used.

 

[chrmkr]

Thanks for the input everyone.
One final question.
Is it neccesary to install everything at one time. Or could I say......install XP and VM, and add Bootcamp at a later date?
Thinking in terms of budget here!

 

[kfordham281]

It's not necessary to install everything at one time. If you want to use a Boot Camp partition with Fusion you'll need to install Boot Camp first though. Since it's free with Leopard and already installed, that shouldn't be an issue. You can't really install things any other way when you want to use Fusion with a Boot Camp partition. Since Fusion is the one thing you don't "need" to run XP on the Mac you're budget question is a moot point.

In order:

Boot Camp (it's already installed with Leopard)
XP
Fusion

 

[Glenny2lappies]

Fusion's great. Use it all day every day and couldn't work without it. The current version 2 is more reliable than the older version.

The great news is that once you've installed XP and your software on Fusion, then you can very easily backup and restore XP simply by copying the Fusion files.

Not sure I'd worry about bootcamp as it's, in my experience, not needed unless you need every ounce of power from the machine. I've found Fusion to be really fast, in fact my VMs are the fastest version of Windows I've ever had.

 

[lugesm]

I have been using Fusion 1.1.2 with WinXP/SP2 on my 24" iMac for several months now with zero problems. And, it is fast. I could not be happier. I tried Parallels, but much prefer Fusion.

A word of caution: For the near term, stick with Fusion 1.1.2 or 1.1.3; do not attempt to load Fusion 2.0. It will be a great program somewhere down the road, but right now it does not have the stability of version 1.1.2.

 

[chrmkr]

It's not necessary to install everything at one time. If you want to use a Boot Camp partition with Fusion you'll need to install Boot Camp first though. Since it's free with Leopard and already installed, that shouldn't be an issue. You can't really install things any other way when you want to use Fusion with a Boot Camp partition. Since Fusion is the one thing you don't "need" to run XP on the Mac you're budget question is a moot point.

In order:

Boot Camp (it's already installed with Leopard)
XP
Fusion

Thanks, I discovered that I had Boot Camp this morning.
JohnNotBeatle said it was an Apple utility. So I looked in my utility folder (duh) and voila.....there it was.
Can't wait to install XP and VM so I can begin using my CAD program.
Thanks everyone, you've been a big help.