I know I already made some brief comments about VMWare in a broad way, but I wanted to talk a little more about it in detail with regard to OS X Leopard. I am very impressed with the software from install to use, everything was very simple to do. I was able to install Windows XP Professional in less then 20 minutes from start to finish. When I completed the install I performed all the Windows updates and found these easy to perform in VMWare Fusion. Restarts were quick and painless. Running or installing applications within Windows in the virtual machine were just as easy.

One of the nicest features I found within VMWare Fusion was Unity. After installing VMWare and Windows, you need to install VMWare Tools inside of your virtual machine. Once installed on your virtual machine you can then enable the Unity feature. What unity does is allow you to run any Windows application in a window on your desktop outside of the virtual machine. This makes the application flow smoothly with OS X and cleans the desktop up nicely. What’s even better is that you can minimize the application to the Dock and the right click it and choose “Keep In Dock”. This now allows you to have a shortcut to your favorite Windows applications right in your OS X dock. When you click the icon on the dock your will start, login to Windows, open your application, and then start Unity. The virtual machine will disappear and your application will be running in a seamless window as though it belonged in OS X for years. With Unity running, you can also click the tool bar at the top of your screen and choose “applications” and then select the Windows application to run.

This is one amazing  piece of software, if I didn’t already own it I would be sold. I highly suggest giving it a try. I do recommend having at least 2gb of RAM in your system as it will tax anything less when running multiple virtual machines. I pushed its limits in testing and did find some slow downs while running a UStream feed pirillo.live, running my own feed to Ustream, running Windows updates, and running my on board web cam in my Macbook. My system did freeze and require a reboot but I am only using 1gb of RAM, after my upgrade to 4gb gets here I expect to have no problems. VMWare Fusion is available from the VMWare website at http://www.vmware.com/mac. You can download a demo version to try before buying. It is well worth the money I paid for it.

Being a tech support representative for a major ISP, I need to stay abreast with Windows and VMWare Fusion has made it simple.

Thank you VMWare!

Buddha