I currently run Parallels 3 with WinXP as guest systems and I thought I'd try out Fusion 2 beta 2 for once since some of those new features sounded really cool to have. Plus VMWare is offering free upgrades to 2.0 for all existing users and I could get a license for $35 I figured why not - since there's no telling whether the next version of Parallels will be free for me.
Off the bat, I've noticed the following:
1. I can't easily resize a hard drive that Fusion configures for me in a VM to one less than 20GB maximum without just deleting it (the HD) and creating one myself. At default it's set to expand, so I guess you may argue that it really doesn't matter what the maximum is, but for those of us short on space it's not pretty. BTW setting it to preallocate the size makes no difference - it won't create a virtual disk for less than 20GB unless you nuked it and made one yourself.
2. The video option isn't all that configurable...it has only one option - turn on/off DX9. No allocation of video memory in Fusion.
3. Fusion seems to install Windows XP at a much faster pace than Parallels does. That's nice.
4. I didn't run into this weird Windows reactivation issue with Fusion that I did with Parallels. Same Technet license with a maximum of 10 machines per license on both VM's.
5. Generally Fusion seems to run pretty well, besides the restart/shutdown process that seems to take minutes...I'm going to attribute this to the expanding HD volume, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
6. I'm not used to the Fusion-mode of drag and drop yet - in Parallels a Windows dialog would come up just like you're copying files to another folder, but in Fusion you don't get that.
7. DirectX seems to have failed mierably at this point. I can't even run FF7 in Fusion at the same configuration as my VM in Parallels, which runs it flawlessly under software mode but artifacts in Direct3D acceleration. It doesn't even start, actually. This could be a software compatibility issue with XP, but it works fine under the same config in Parallels.
I'm hoping the final version of Fusion2 would be nicer, and if anyone else has tried it or just has clues about how to resolve some of those issues that'd be great
Off the bat, I've noticed the following:
1. I can't easily resize a hard drive that Fusion configures for me in a VM to one less than 20GB maximum without just deleting it (the HD) and creating one myself. At default it's set to expand, so I guess you may argue that it really doesn't matter what the maximum is, but for those of us short on space it's not pretty. BTW setting it to preallocate the size makes no difference - it won't create a virtual disk for less than 20GB unless you nuked it and made one yourself.
2. The video option isn't all that configurable...it has only one option - turn on/off DX9. No allocation of video memory in Fusion.
3. Fusion seems to install Windows XP at a much faster pace than Parallels does. That's nice.
4. I didn't run into this weird Windows reactivation issue with Fusion that I did with Parallels. Same Technet license with a maximum of 10 machines per license on both VM's.
5. Generally Fusion seems to run pretty well, besides the restart/shutdown process that seems to take minutes...I'm going to attribute this to the expanding HD volume, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
6. I'm not used to the Fusion-mode of drag and drop yet - in Parallels a Windows dialog would come up just like you're copying files to another folder, but in Fusion you don't get that.
7. DirectX seems to have failed mierably at this point. I can't even run FF7 in Fusion at the same configuration as my VM in Parallels, which runs it flawlessly under software mode but artifacts in Direct3D acceleration. It doesn't even start, actually. This could be a software compatibility issue with XP, but it works fine under the same config in Parallels.
I'm hoping the final version of Fusion2 would be nicer, and if anyone else has tried it or just has clues about how to resolve some of those issues that'd be great
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