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YoutubeWindows Gets Even Better on the Mac with VMware Fusion 2: 100+ New Features, Free Upgrade for Existing Users
We’re proud to announce that VMware Fusion 2 is now available.
VMware Fusion 2 builds on the success of VMware Fusion 1, which in its first year on the market has earned hundreds of thousands of users, won more than a dozen awards, and convinced thousands to switch the power and performance VMware Fusion brings to Windows on the Mac.
VMware Fusion 2, a free, downloadable upgrade for all VMware Fusion 1.x customers, adds over 100 new features and enhancements including:
More Seamless with Unity 2.0: Application Sharing, Link Handling, Mirrored Folders, Driverless Printing, True Multiple Display Support, and Custom Keyboard Mapping
Safer Windows on Mac experience with AutoProtect automated snapshots and a 12-month complimentary subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus security software for Windows XP and Vista
More Power with DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 3D graphics, 1080p HD video playback, Multiple Snapshots, 4-way vSMP, and Better Linux Support (Unity & Easy Install)
More Mac-like, More Mac-friendly with all new Welcome Screen, Virtual Machine Library and Virtual Machine Settings, Cover Flow and Quick Look integration, and Apple Help
Finally, Mac OS X Leopard Server now is supported in a virtual machine on Mac hardware
To all our early supporters, we’d like to thank you, and encourage you to grab the shiny new bits here.
And we would similarly like to encourage anyone interested in running Windows, Linux, Mac OS X Server, and more than 60+ other operating systems, on their Mac to give VMware Fusion 2 a spin by grabbing 30-day trial.
It even looks prettier! I love with an update includes UI changes.
Posted by: Josh | September 16, 2008 at 09:35 AM
nobody tested this release with the ancient & unlovable win98, did they?
Posted by: bloodnok | September 16, 2008 at 05:03 PM
The developers made unity more seamless. Thanks!
One thing---can there be a flavor of suspend that suspends the guest o/s without committing it to disk storage? My machine is a Macbook: if the o/s auto-suspends after a few minutes of inactivity, I can save power because there won't be a constant drain of cpu activity to support the guest o/s. If there are any windows in unity, you can put a grey+gauss transparency effect over it to indicate that it's in suspension.
Or even better, after suspending the guest o/s, make the memory image pageable so that the memory manager can swap it out as needed.
Posted by: Jeff | September 16, 2008 at 08:14 PM
Question, maybe a silly one, sorry...
If I've backed up my Windows laptop with a clone of the drive, can I install or copy that onto or into VMware and will my windows apps work?
Why do I want to do this? Because I would like to buy a mac as my next laptop, but still need access to my windows apps from time to time, without lugging around a 2nd machine.
Posted by: randalltrini | September 17, 2008 at 07:13 AM
@randalltrini
You can't use a regular hard disk clone, however you can install the free VMware Converter found elsewhere on this site to convert a physical machine in a virtual one.
Posted by: Fiatlux | September 18, 2008 at 02:56 PM
Hi,
Fusion is getting better and better. However i tried to install Mac OS Server in a virtual on my macbook pro coreduo. The installation of osx starts but after a while I have the grey boot screen that hangs. i tried to install it on a core2duo without any problems. If i copy the virtual machine form the core2duo to the coreduo it runs without any problems. What do i do wrong or is this o bug?
Posted by: Robert van Campenhout | September 19, 2008 at 02:27 AM
McAfee trial - give me a break. I try and buy quality software when I can. What I don't need is unsolicited rubbish. I'm sure it's a good revenue earner for you, but it makes the product look and feel cheaper.
Posted by: Richard Turner | September 19, 2008 at 03:04 AM
Counter Strike: Source - BAHHH
I've been using 'parall....' for a while and when I found that Fusion has improved DirectX I thought I'd try it again.
Tried CS:S and it was awful, even setting all the video settings to LOW it was unusable.
What age of game can you play on Fusion?
Posted by: Paul | September 19, 2008 at 07:04 AM
@Richard: As you might imagine, not all features are designed for you alone. Your indignation is misplaced.
We have hundreds of thousands of users, and many more every day, the majority of whom have no idea about the importance of running AV in a virtual machine.
You are a technical user who does. A new switcher to the Mac who has no idea about computer security needs to be informed, and provided with an easy means to access protection. The alternative is much worse--users who have no idea that they ought to be running AV.
McAfee does not auto-install. It simply prompts to ask if you'd like 12-months of free antivirus.
If you don't, just click "Don't Show Again" and you'll be just fine--you'll never see the prompt again.
And with that: you never get bothered, and yet all those tens of thousands of people who WILL get value out of this are protected. Pretty cool, isn't it?
Posted by: Peter Kazanjy | September 19, 2008 at 11:39 AM
Too bad that even VMware Fusion 2.0 is still not able to display the Windows XP taskbar above the Dock... something that has been in Parallels 2.0 from two years back.
Well, at least application windows now do respect the Dock, and multiple snapshots have finally arrived in VMware Fusion, but even this new feature lacks the powerful tree view known from VMware Workstation and, yes, you already guessed it... Parallels !
Although 2.0 is a really big improvement over 1.x, there is still very much left to be enhanced.
Also, I wonder whether it is due to my recent Mac OS X 10.5.5 update or VMware Fusion 2.0 that the average system load (and temperature although it is getting colder where I live) have increased when a VM is running.
Posted by: Archimedix | September 20, 2008 at 08:00 AM
Any hint how to folder-share more than one external drive? At the moment this seems to be broken in Fusion 2.0 - too bad because it's the only way to access Firewire drives from a virtual machine.
Posted by: Stefan | September 22, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Guys,
Thanks for the great software.
However I have one thing that I am really missing in Fusion.
See I can switch input locales on a mac by hitting cmd-space. But in Windows it different key sequence. And this annoys me greatly.
So wouldn't it be great to force windows in VM to have the same key sequence? VMware tools could do this, no?
Will be waiting for your reply!
Thank you!
Posted by: Sergey | September 23, 2008 at 07:03 AM
@Stefan:
You can share as many external drives as "shared folders" as you like. Just connect the drives, and add them via the "Sharing" settings in "Virtual Machine > Sharing". There's also a tutorial on this here: www.vmware.com/go/fusiontutorials
Posted by: Pete Kazanjy | September 23, 2008 at 08:45 AM
@Sergey
This seems like it would be possible to handle via the keyboard mapping in VMware Fusion 2. Go to "VMware Fusion>Preferences>Keyboard&Mouse" and add "Cmd-Space" as a Mac shortcut, and map it to what you would like Windows to read it as.
Posted by: Pete Kazanjy | September 23, 2008 at 08:47 AM
@Pete
That's exactly what I did, but that doesn't solve the problem. I just can't share both Firewire drives, because if I activat one, I get an alert (above the "Sharing" settings) which tells me that some shared or mirrored folders cannot be activated because they are nested. Indeed, now the checkbox of the other drives is deactivated (greyed out), I cannot check it. If I uncheck the first one, I can share the second, but not both at the same time.
My theory is that it is because both are FAT32 formatted drives. I can connect a 3rd drive (HFS formatted) and I am able to share it in addition to either of the two FAT32 drives.
Maybe I found a bug? I can send screenshots if you like.
Otherwise I am very happy with the trial, so far. I like it much more than Parallels, which feels somehow bloated and doesn't work anymore after I have installed SP3 on Bootcamp (known Parallels issue, don't get me started on the workaround they suggest - reinstall everything).
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Stefan | September 23, 2008 at 09:08 AM
I have a macbook pro core duo. I saw someone else mention the same problem. I tried to install leopard server in vmware fusion 2.0 It just sits at the grey screen. Please suggest a workaround. Thanks for a cool product.
Posted by: sukhi | September 24, 2008 at 05:18 AM
Key Mappings is a bit buggy for me in Fusion 2. In preferences, I can see that it is enabled. However, if I hop into a browser window and hit command-c, nothing gets copied. hitting command-c twice does copy text though.
Posted by: Ken | September 24, 2008 at 11:45 AM
@Robert, sukhi:
As documented in the release notes, you need a 64-bit CPU (i.e. not a Core Duo or Core Solo, but rather a Core 2 Duo or Xeon) to install OS X Server as a guest.
Posted by: Eric Tung | September 24, 2008 at 08:51 PM
I just upgraded to Fusion 2.0. One thing that I have noticed is that the boot up and shut down times for Windoze XP has increased significantly when compared to Fusion 1. I was wondering if there is something that can be done to shorten this?
Posted by: Michael Koziewicz | September 25, 2008 at 02:42 PM
There seemes to be some issues with Unity and Linux hosts. Is this a known issue? If not, how can users like myself submit bug reports?
Posted by: Geir Helland | September 29, 2008 at 01:46 AM
Just upgraded, and it doesn't seem any faster. ALso in unity view I still get the weird two icons issue while command+tabbing, that is I have to command+tab through two icons to go from unity windows xp app to a mac app (one icon is the vmware icon, and the other is the app icon like IE)
Posted by: Bjorn Tipling | October 01, 2008 at 01:03 PM
Can I load a VM from an external drive ? I mean have the virtual machine live on an external USB-based drive. Is this at all possible ?
Posted by: Marcelo Lopez | October 29, 2008 at 04:16 PM
I'm running VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro and have plenty of hard disk space but have run out of room on my C drive. How can I overcome this. I have much more room available on the virtual disk but the C drive apparently cannot use it. What gives? Am I virtually out of luck?
Thanks,
herb
Posted by: Herb Paynter | November 09, 2008 at 01:23 PM
@herb
You can indeed expand your virtual machine's disk. Just look in the searchable help under the "Help" menu.
Search for "hard disk" or "resizing" or "disk".
Enjoy!
Posted by: Pete Kazanjy | November 10, 2008 at 11:05 AM
I have a MacBookPro with Parallels on it. Nothing but problems. I want to change to VM Fusion. Does anyone know if I can just install VMware over the top of Parallels, or do I have to delete Parallels and reinstall XP and all the other software? Thanks.
Posted by: Chris Raftery | November 16, 2008 at 10:02 AM
Chris,
All your questions, and more are answered on the vmware.com/mac resources tab: http://www.vmware.com/go/fusiontutorials
In short, you can just install VMware Fusion 2, and import your Parallels virtual machine, and ready to rock!
Pete
Posted by: Pete Kazanjy | November 16, 2008 at 03:45 PM
I heard Pete Kazanjy's discussion of VMWare Fusion 2.0 on theMacVoices podcast episode #8125, where he offered MacVoices listeners a 15% discount with a promo code, as noted in Chuck Joiner's podcast show notes. Why does VMWare's online store refuse to honor this MacVoices promo, which had no stated expiration date?
Posted by: rick | November 21, 2008 at 10:19 AM
*sigh*
i sat there watching this cybermonday deal slip by as i don't live in US or Canada :(
Posted by: ray | December 02, 2008 at 12:21 AM
I've just installed Fusion 2 & immediately upgraded to Fusion 2.0.1 & noticed that within the VM, having installed Windows XP, I cannot access the web for updates, while Safari is working fine on the Mac side... Any help will be much appreciated.
Posted by: Garry Gleeson | December 14, 2008 at 07:02 AM
Windows does not display properly or completely on my macbook and no one will help me.
Appreciate any info you can give me.
many thanks!!
Posted by: Pamela | February 13, 2009 at 12:57 PM