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MacSheep
Contributor
Contributor

Any positive experiences with version 4?

I purchased the v4 upgrade but have held off on upgrading from 3.1.3 based on all the issues I've seen on this board over the last few days.

I realize that having a problem is the impetus for many who arrive here, but is anyone having a good experience with version 4? I need to hear some: 'No problems for me,' 'Works great,' 'Faster!,' 'Bridged and NAT both work flawlessly,' 'Rock solid!' etc. Anyone?

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Kenneth868
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

halcwb wrote:

Great question, switching from fusion 2 to 3 was rather a traumatic experience for me, but in the long run version 3 has paid off. I think the lesson is indeed to monitor this forum until I more or less get convinced that 4 is better than 3 and even then, I never ever going to switch using a production machine. So, if you have the luxury, try it out on a spare machine.

I am going to wait for a while, I am a very satisfied fusion 3 user, I do not want to get a frustrated fusion 4 userSmiley Wink

I have same the conclusion for Fusion product line.

After suffering from version 3, I will only start my evaluation when 4.1 comes out.

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Coach300
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have done pretty well with Fusion 4.0.1. Seems to function better in Lion than Fusion 3 did. 3 did better under Snow Leopard than under Lion.

I only run a couple of Windows apps but I always download my software in Safari (Mac) and drag/drop to a Windows downloads folder. In Fusion 3, I always had to highlight (in the left side of the Windows Explorer window) the Downloads bar. With the Finder window in the background, I would then drag the icon to the Downloads bar to get it to "take" into Windows. In Fusion 4/Lion, I can have the Finder window in front and drag/drop right to the Windows Downloads folder far more seamlessly.

Another thing: I frequently Command-Tab between applications. In Fusion 4/Lion, in Fusion Unity, the icon for the app running in Windows appears sharp; it was a bit blurred/bitmapped in the past. Ditto for the dock. So that just looks a lot nicer.

Unity, on the other hand, isn't as automatic. I prefer that mode and I get the 'Fusion cannot enter Unity' during startup, but it doesn't enter Unity on its own. I have to change the View to Single Window or Full Screen, then re-select Unity, to get that mode working. But once it's done, it's working fine and my observations above are testament of how I like using that mode.

In addition, I'm not hearin any Windows sounds, but I will look at other thread in this community to see if it's addressed there. No major issue anyway.

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dp_fusion
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have not had a positive experience at all. I have had a slate grey neutral experience. I shut down all my virtual machines and made a tarball of the directory they are in. I then downloaded and installed Fusion 4.0 and installed it. The install did not go cleanly in that the demo licensing and my existing license became entangled in the menus and I somehow ended up with two installers trying to get the job done. I killed off one of them and finished the upgrade in situ over 3.1.3.

When the installer finished I was placed into the VMware Library window which is very annoying to me as I think an installer should install and I will decide if I then wish to launch. It installed and launched and that was unexpected. Dear Fusion team - don't think for me as I like to do that.

Anyway - I started Win7 64-bit, went through the conversion process to make it a Fusion 4 VM and it started up, went though some VMwareTools machinations, rebooted, and voila, there's Win7 looking pretty much like it should. So well and good. I started the Mac OSX Juniper VPN and connected to my office network then in Win7 I started an RDP on my desktop there. This is the only reason I use VMware with Windows. I'm happy to say the RDP session worked a treat, no particular performance advantage over 3.1.3 but certainly none of the broken dreams of others who have tried this.

I then launched in turn all my 32 and 64 bit RHEL 4, 5, and 6 VMs, one SUSE 11 system, and a Solaris 10 system, and all worked fine as before. No surprises, slate grey experience, just the way I like it.

So I'm happy with Fusion 4.0 so far. I am running it on Snow Leopard on a very new MacBook Pro and will not be upgrading to Lion as it requires signing the repugnant EULA at the App Store and that isn't going to happen. Running a business is incompatible with a vendor who will pull your license if they "suspect" you are in violation of the EULA.

I hope VMware doesn't drink the App Store Kool-Aide because I'm pretty happy with this upgrade and would like to remain a customer at home as well as at work. Having just shepherded the POs through for a cx4-480 and four Data Domain dedupe appliances, and a recent build-out of several high end ESXi hosts, I'm very much a VMware customer (directly and via EMC). Please don't screw it up.

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swilkins65
Contributor
Contributor

15" 2.2Ghz Early 2011 MBP; Fresh install of VM4 running windows 7 64-bit on Lion (was a VM3 user on a late 2008 MBP via BootCamp)

My experience thus far is mostly positive; been running VM 4 just over a week but I've had some issues.  I'm a ERP consultant and so having windows running all day long is a requirement.  For the most part it's been smooth but I've allocated half of quad core (2 physical, 2 virtual cores) and 4GB (of my 8 total) to the VM and windows is coming back 2-3 times a day suggesting that I downgrade from Aero to Basic because of high system resources utilization.  (I'm usually just running Word and IE8 displaying a static HTML based application window).  Nothing that should even be getting close to making my machine work hard.  So I think VM may have some tweaking to do or Apple may need to update some drivers.  I've tried turning off the dynamic 3D power setting in OSX but that didn't change the outcome.

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MacSheep
Contributor
Contributor

swilkins65 --

Not to hijack my own thread... but I would definitely be looking for causes other than VMWare or Apple drivers. I have a mid-2010 MBP 2.53/8GB running Win 7 x64 in windowed mode for 10+ hours day and I never see anything about reverting to basic. I typically have Outlook 2010, IE8 (multiple tabs open with web-based apps) and Word or Excel 2010 running in guest and Adium, Photoshop 5.5 and Chrome running on the host. My VM is set to 1 core and 2560MB of RAM. Have to wonder if there isn't something else churning your resources or if you are starving the host in cores and RAM. Looking through console logs has helped me identify invisibles that were eating up resources in past. A corrupt Spotlight database has been an issue, as have corrupt/duplicate fonts (check via Font Book). These problems may not be visible but can have a big effect on your machine. Also, you may want to consider adding your VMs to the Privacy list in Spotlight, adding them to the safe list in any antivirus software on the Host, or turning off the app menu/default applications in VMWare.

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dslund
Contributor
Contributor

I've had no issues here. I'm running XP32, Win8 Preview 32, OSX Lion 10.7.1, and LinuxMint 11 32bit. No issues so far. I am very pleased with the program so far.

David

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bgeherman
Contributor
Contributor

MacSheep, thanks for your original and updated posts.  A few questions: If you uninstall Fusion 3.x, it will not remove your VM's?  If so, then after uninstall,  manual clean-up and clean Fusion 4.x install did Fusion 4 automatically find your VM's upon first launch?  Thanks in advance.

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MacSheep
Contributor
Contributor

You are correct that uninstalling VMWare application does not affect your VMs. They are left alone during the uninstall. After installing v4, they were not found automatically -- assume this is because I cleaned out all the v3 prefs, etc. files. I just went to the File menu in v4, selected Open, and then selected one of my VMs... then repeated this process for each of them. You'll be asked to confirm updating the machine type and then when the VM opens, the update to the new Tools appears to already be queued up and running. It even updated the Tools instance on my company's Win7 VM without me having to login (took about 10 min but was surprised not to have to enter admin credentials, etc.).

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tracywang
Expert
Expert

I just went to the File menu in v4, selected Open, and then selected one of my VMs... then repeated this process for each of them.

Just FYI, Fusion Virtual Machine Library support Drag and drop, drag your VM bundle files to the library will do the same thing as your did. Smiley Happy

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harpo1
Contributor
Contributor

I have been using VMware Fusion for over a year now and about 2 weeks ago I upgraded from version 3 to 4.

I run 4 Windows programs on my Mac, one being Proshow Producer and as it turns out Proshow Producer was the only program of the 4 that wasn't working as it did with Fusion 3. I have always been of the view, if you have a problem with a software program you ask the Software Support Team of that program to solve the problem for you and it also helps them make adjustments to their software. This I did with the VMware Support Team and after a number of emails back and forth my problem was solved. The VMware Support Team were a pleasure to deal with.

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