VMWare’s Newest Blog: Virtual Reality

VMWare just announced that it’s adding a new blog on Virtual Reality to its blog network . In its debut post, Mike DiPetrillo touts about the 4 reasons why he switched to VMWare Fusion (other than being a VMWare employee). Here goes the list:

1) Stability. At the core of Fusion is the same engine we’ve been shipping with VMware Workstation since 1998. It’s in its 6th generation and just plain works. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crashed my machine while running Parallels. For example, here’s a neat trick. Go start up your Windows XP VM in Parallels. Run something that uses a lot of CPU. For me that’s usually running MS Flight Sim. Now, go and suspend the VM. BAM! Crashes every time on several different machines. I’ve got 5 other tests I’ll blog on in the future where Parallels just crashes with simple tasks.

2) Battery Life. Even at idle, Parallels still uses about 15 – 20% of the CPU on my Macbook Pro. My battery only lasts about 1 1/2 hours on the road. Ouch! With Fusion it seems to run much cooler – about 0.5% of the CPU. My battery agrees and usually lasts about 4 hours on a single charge.

3) USB just works. Before switching to the Mac I had a HP Scanjet 7800. Great scanner. When I switched to the Mac and ran Parallels I couldn’t see or use the scanner anymore. There were no drivers for the Mac so I had to go to my really old Epson single sheet scanner I had laying around. Urggh. In comes Fusion to save the day. Right away Windows in a Fusion VM recognized the scanner and I became a much happier person (my wife would agree).

4) Performance. According to the CNET Crave Tests we really perform well. I tend to agree with that. I haven’t done any official benchmarks just yet but things are snappier with Fusion. Just do a search for “vmware fusion performance” and you’ll get several other opinions on the matter which pretty much agree that Fusion is faster.