Making Unity more user friendly

[jhyiesla]

I play with both Fusion and Parallels. Fusion is my primary program, but sometimes when putting this on the Mac of a less techie user I choose Parallels because it seems to more seamlessly go into Crystal mode than Fusion goes into Unity.

With Parallels, after the VM boots, it momentarily shows a single window, then goes into Crystal mode and displays the Login screen as a window. I don't have to do anything special to get it to go into this mode.

With Fusion, I have to click into the dialog box to display the single window display and then log in and finally Unity starts up and that disappears and all is OK.

Is there anyway to just have the VM boot into unity and display the login box automatically?

[linkdupont]

Why not set the VM to log in automatically at boot time? This would create a more seamless experience with Unity anyway. If your Mac is set up with password logins, then your VM is secure too. It makes Windows even more of an appliance too.

Here's the KB on enabling automatic logins on XP (it's a similar process for Vista & 7): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315231

[jhyiesla]

And I can do that... you're right, my machine is pretty secure on it's own.

[jhyiesla]

There are some concerns though.

PW is stored in registry as clear text. Every time PW changes, I have to change the registry.

Parallels handles this better. If their integration product can start up before logging in, why can't Fusion's?

[linkdupont]

There are some concerns though.

PW is stored in registry as clear text. Every time PW changes, I have to change the registry.

Parallels handles this better. If their integration product can start up before logging in, why can't Fusion's?

True, my suggestion is not a solution to the issue; it's a workaround. Is your Windows VM bound to an Active Directory domain?

[jhyiesla]

Yes, it is.

[linkdupont]

Ohh that's why. Yea, with a password of that nature, I would have hesitations about storing it in clear text and such too.

[linkdupont]

Just tried rebooting my VM while in Unity and I get this window.

I never noticed since I tend to just suspend this VM when I'm not using it. Guess I don't reboot as often as I should! haha

[jhyiesla]

Yes, it's not that it doesn't work, but I get the window you posted above, but only after I hit the little arrow about displaying the window. Then I have to log in. If I shut down my VM at the end of the day, don't have to do anything, but don't know that it's truly down without hitting the VM icon.

Parallels will boot into a single window that automatically shows, then that disappears and I am left with just the login window. If I shut down the VM, it's Crystal mode shuts down and I am left with the single window again so that I know for sure when the VM is down. This makes things so much smoother.

[SvenGus]

BTW, looking at the screenshot, it would be cool to have tabs - as a "docked windows" option - also in the main Fusion interface, similarly to Workstation: maybe for Fusion 4, who knows...