

VMware Fusion 4 Released - sciurus
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/overview.html

======
sirn
They seems to change the EULA to allow installing on as may Macs as long as
you own it[1], compared to previous license[2]:

    
    
        You are prohibited from installing and using the Software on more than one computer at a time
    

[1]: <http://twitter.com/#!/VMwareFusion/status/113994645062684672>

[2]: <http://www.vmware.com/download/eula/fusion3.html>

~~~
sirn
Can't edit my comment for some reason, but EULA now reads (from VMware Fusion
4 installation):

    
    
        VMware Fusion
        
        You may install and use the Software for personal, non-commercial use
        on any Apple-branded products running Mac OS X (“Mac Computer”) that
        you own or control.

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bstx
Did they discontinue academic pricing? Anyway, Coupon: "FUSION20" gives you a
20% discount.

~~~
lancefisher
Looks like they have academic pricing, but it's the same as the promo price.
$49.99: <http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/academicstore.html>

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sciurus
Release notes

[https://www.vmware.com/support/fusion4/doc/releasenotes_fusi...](https://www.vmware.com/support/fusion4/doc/releasenotes_fusion_401.html)

It runs Windows 8.

<http://twitter.com/#!/VMwareFusion/status/113988639339450368>

~~~
rnicholson
_Mac OS X Lion and Mac OS X Lion Server are now supported as guest operating
systems. Mac OS X Lion can be installed by dragging the Lion installer icon to
the virtual machine wizard._

Nice! So, how exactly does one do this? The Lion Installer seems to be gone
from my system since I upgraded to Lion...

~~~
ryannielsen
Re-download Lion from the Mac App Store. You'll find it under the "Purchases"
section. Everything in that section can be re-downloaded and reinstalled for
free.

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jpitz
VMWare Fusion 3 customers, no need to fret. Unless you purchased after July
20th, you get to pay full price just like everyone else. ( I'd be happy to be
wrong, but at this point, I feel a tad betrayed. To the point that I am
considering dumping Fusion )

~~~
sirn
$49 full price isn't that bad compared to Parallels 7. Not only you have to
pay $49 for an _upgrade_ , it will also slow down your boot time
drastically[1]. VMware Fusion user can get P7 for $29[2] but from my
experience I'd rather not switch.

I upgrade to P7 few days ago, and today I'm switching to Fusion 4 hope to
never become Parallel's customer again. (Unrelated note, it took Parallels 7
hours to send me an upgrade key after purchase while it only took VMware 3
hours to _answer_ my question regarding Fusion 4.)

[1]: <http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=113543>

[2]: <http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/vmwareoffer/>

~~~
m_eiman
On my account page, license section, they've put this notice:

"Upgrades for the following products: View 5, _Fusion 4_ , Workstation 8, Site
Recovery Manager 5, and vFabric will be available on the licensing portal by
the week of 9/19. If you have questions, please contact License support."

So maybe upgrade prices will be available next week.

~~~
jpitz
Thank You!

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EricButler
Does anyone know if this supports the the vmwgfx Gallium3D driver for
accelerated opengl in linux guests?

UPDATE: VMware responded (within 6 minutes) on Twitter and the answer is no.
[https://twitter.com/#!/vmwarefusion/status/11402734522400768...](https://twitter.com/#!/vmwarefusion/status/114027345224007681)

------
alexg0
As a new Mac convert, why would one use this, instead of VirtualBox?

~~~
pat2man
Fusion and Parallels both are a bit faster than VirtualBox and have more
features.

Also, VMWare VMs will work with any VMWare product so if you are working with
a team that uses VMWare elsewhere its nice to have.

If you are just trying to run a Windows app or two you are probably better off
with VirtualBox since its free.

~~~
evilduck
Except for OSX VMs built using Fusion's built-in capabilities. The other
VMware products don't ship the required libraries to boot them.

~~~
yardie
You have to downgrade the vmx to prep a fusion vm to be loaded into esx. Or
you can download the vmware convertor app that will transfer the vm, convert
the vmx, and register the vm in esx.

I use the application weekly for this task.

~~~
evilduck
I meant OSX as a guest OS.

~~~
yardie
For that you'll need a machine with SMC and only Macs have it.

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marchdown
Free update for those who bought Fusion 3 after the release of Lion! [1]. No
word on pricing for old clients as of yet.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/#!/VMwareFusion/status/11410952248165990...](https://twitter.com/#!/VMwareFusion/status/114109522481659904)

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zeratul
What happen with DirectX 11?

"The WDDM driver for Windows 7 and Vista now includes support for DirectX
9.0EX with Aero and OpenGL 2.1. Windows XP now includes support for DirectX
9.0c and OpenGL 2.1."

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colinr
I've just given it a quick go and gone straight back to v3. Fusion on Lion
still lacks native full screen and the interface feels a lot slower.
Nevermind, maybe a rush to compete with Parallels?

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hemancuso
I wish Fusion worked half as well as VMware Workstation does on Windows. OS
X's memory management appears to shoulder most of the blame.

Darwin loves to hold on to recently wired memory as long as possible and does
not gracefully dump out 2GB of inactive memory at a moments notice. The
performance of snapshots as well as multiple VMs even inside 8GB of RAM
totally sucks compared to workstation.

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lawnchair_larry
Still no 3D support on linux, and I don't see any mention of pause/resume
support for Boot Camp partitions. Disappointing. Parallels has had both of
these for a while.

Useful (but not updated for 4):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VMware_Fusion_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_VMware_Fusion_and_Parallels_Desktop)

~~~
danbee
There's a good reason why you can't. If you suspend Boot Camp in VMware and
then try and reboot into it it could cause corruption of your Boot Camp
partition. If you really want to do it though I seem to remember reading about
a plist tweak that adds the options back in.

Edit: <http://communities.vmware.com/thread/108022>

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mrpollo
VMware Fusion 4 has a migration utility to upgrade from 3, really nice

<http://twitpic.com/6kwhhs>

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mrbill
I tried out P7 when it was released, and immediately migrated back to Fusion 4
today when it came out.

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suking
I don't even get how people can use VMware. I've tried it on my macbook and
it's unbearably slow. I bought a cheap PC off of craigslist because VMware was
too slow to use. 4 gigs of ram and still lagged like all hell.

~~~
danbee
I found my 2010 MacBook Pro with 4Gb unbearably slow even without running
VMware Fusion. Mac OS X really requires 8Gb these days, unless you're running
an SSD.

