What I'd like to see in Fusion 1.1

[neilio]

\

• Faster restore from suspend -- I'm not sure what black magic Parallels is doing, but their VMs restore from suspend incredibly fast. It would be nice to see this in Fusion.

\* The CPU usage while idling bug fixed (reported elsewhere in the forums). I see this constantly and it's one of the things that makes me want to switch back to Parallels.

\* Mounting the VM as a volume. This is a Parallels feature and it's really handy.

\* Unity improvements. Maybe the release on Monday will fix these, but I've found Unity to be incredibly flaky. Often if no windows are open and active I cannot do anything to the currently running VM from the menu bar. Or, if I switch to Unity I often lose all of the currently open windows and cannot find them until I switch back to the single window mode.

\* Preferences to launch VMs in a specific view setting (Unity, full screen, etc.)

\* Improved 3D support. I haven't attempted to play any games in Fusion, but my expectations aren't very high.

Anything else that anyone can think of?

[IscariotJ]

The other Workstation features I would love to

have... but I'd rather have the full Workstation for

OS X. OK, yeah, that's some more cash out of pocket,

and yeah I'm groveling on the ground with gratitude

about Fusion existing and working like a champ...

but I still want Workstation for OS X[/b].

It can't be said enough, WS For OSX is a must; I would gladly stump up the extra cash for WS. And, I'd love to see a version of Server for OSX. Surely, these are on the roadmap....

Back to 1.1; the things I'd like to see in 1.1 are limited to better 3d support for MacBooks, but I think that mainly depends on Apple sorting out the drivers.

[alfonsoml]

Cross platform file associations - so I can double

click on a Word document in XP and have it open in

Mac Word.

And to extend on that...please make that configurable

right from the beginning since I actually don't like

that much interaction between my guests and the

host...

Ciao, Andreas

Not only configurable. By default (if it is added that feature), it should be disabled and big warnings should be shown on activation.

A guest OS shouldn't need to know anything about its host, it must be as isolated as possible given the huge number of attacks on windows I don't want to suffer a problem in a virtual machine that messes up my host.

[zbeckman]

After reading through the list, I'll reinforce requests for:

\* Better unity support in Vista, and better Unity overall (Parallels is a bit better here, mostly I'm referring to remembering previous state, not changing my window sizes, and getting rid of poor graphic artifacts).

\* Full support for 3D in Vista. I would love to try out a few games... (EVE-Online...) I did try EVE-Online actually, and got a blue screen.

\* Ability to open a VM file system from OS/X without starting the VM (a Parallels feature) strikes me as very useful, although I haven't used it yet.

\* Full support for boot camp partitions (which from what I hear is already supported, but I haven't had the chance to try it -- I'm mentioning it here because I'm very much looking forward to being able to use Fusion to boot my boot camp partition when I get it done...)

\* Multiple snapshots would be a handy feature.

[Jordan206]

I would love to see the ability to \*not* display Guest Applications in the Dock. If I have six or seven different MMC windows open, their nasty, pixely icons clutter my dock and make it too small to use

[zbeckman]

I would love to see the ability to \*not* display Guest Applications in the Dock. If I have six or seven different MMC windows open, their nasty, pixely icons clutter my dock and make it too small to use

Yes! Agreed.

[mrachul]

I'll throw in for Multiple SnapShots like WS too.

[robind]

I also miss the Snapshots Manager and a few other things from Workstation.

[elitedev]

am i the only one who'd love to see high-res icons in the doc for Unity (where available; icing on the cake would be an option to specify custom .ico/.icns files to use as replacement)?

[wdeboer]

Yes, sounds like a good plan! Vista apparently supports high resolution icons, which Unity could nicely use in the dock bar.

[mosco]

I am currently testing both Parallels and Fusion, and so far the biggest plus of Fusion is its performance. Parallels takes up a lot more cpu even when idle, a big problem on a macbook pro since it makes it run very hot & results in shorter battery life.

Parallels's coherence mode works a lot better than Fusion's unity. But to me the performance is more important so I more inclined toward sticking with Fusion.

The improvements I'd like to see for Fusion:

\- Fix bugs in unity (dual monitor support and the ability to display the windows (xp) task bar are essential)

\- Mount vm as a shared volume, a very nice feature in Parallels

\- Remember windows position (and screen for dual monitor setups), size and mode (full screen, unity, etc..)

Thanks.

[admin]

The Docker applications live in the virtual machine bundle under Applications. You can change their icon like you could any other app.

[rhind]

1. OpenGL support. The apps I develop do run in software open gl mode, but look much better in Parallels with its accelerated OpenGL.

2. Unity improvements for single VM usage. I only have 1 VM, I hate the launch window. I have my apps in the dock but with no window open:

a) The launch window keeps appearing

b) If I close that, many menu items aren't available in VMWare

3) Unity Z-Buffer improvements. I tend to only have visual studio 2005 and windows explorer windows open but if I use the dock icons to switch between them, more often than not, the appropriate window doesn't actually come to the front (even though it is activated. I end up having to use alt-tab to use windows task switching a couple of times to get it restored corectly

4) Unity to work with task bar docked to the left of the screen. I have my dock on the left of the screen as all Mac displays now are widescreen, and would like to use the method of stopping windows maximising under the dock by making the task bar the same size as the dock. But unfortunately Unity doesn't work correctly with the task bar in this position

5) Auto-screen locking of a Windows Guest when suspending so it prompts for password on restart. I have some encrypted files (using NTFS encryption) but if I suspend a guest, then if someone gets hold of the VM, they can access the guest and hence the files immediately with no password. Therefore I have to either remember to lock the guest before suspending, or not use suspend.

Cheers

Russell

[elitedev]

etung: ah yes, thanx! that said, i'd still be nice if VMware would by default get te high-res icons from the VM, where possible...

[Portelly]

Dear Santa,

You know, I really enjoyed working on Fusion right through it's various releases.

I Still enjoy working on Fusion. And the reason?

I don't have any problem of restore from suspend. In fact, he's (the restore) pretty fast.

I don't have any problem as launch Fusion in single windows. It's great for me cause i don't have to remember the mode (if i'm home/work at the office or outside the office).

I don't remember fusion have CPU usage while Idle. Right now , i'm on my macbook (core2duo/ 2GHz/2Go RAM) with 2 WM (1 XP & 1 Vista) idling and the CPU usage is between 1% and 15%

But today i desperately want, at a minimum, Something more powerful

°) I dream, some night, that i walk in the sky (no, not with a lightsaber) and i jump from virtual disk to virtual disk without a need to open Fusion.

Aka : Mounting the Virtual disk would be really great.

°) Sometimes, i need to shrink my Vista in less than 5 hours of prep. and 3 hours of shrinking.

°) And if you have the time, (I know you're busy with all this Parallels guys moving to Fusion) but maybe you'll can improve the compatibility between "Microsoft Guest OS" and the process VMwareUser.exe.

I get some crash but it's not really important for the 1.0.

°) Don't Improve the 3D support on GMA 950, please don't or let us have an option to disable the 3D support.

Love

Gabriel

P.s. don't forget my new IPhone and my new macbook pro for christmas. (I'll leave the key under the mat 😃

[Pat_Lee]

Russell,

Thanks for your feedback.

There is one feature you might be able to add yourself today:

5) Auto-screen locking of a Windows Guest when

suspending so it prompts for password on restart. I

have some encrypted files (using NTFS encryption) but

if I suspend a guest, then if someone gets hold of

the VM, they can access the guest and hence the files

immediately with no password. Therefore I have to

either remember to lock the guest before suspending,

or not use suspend.

You can modify the suspend/resume scripts inside the guest to do what you want. Launch the VMware Tools UI inside Windows and select the scripts tab. You can override the default included scripts to do whatever is supported from inside a script, which I would assume could even lock the UI first though I haven't tried it personally.

Take a look at the default scripts, make a copy, and try to add screen locking to the suspend script and point at your new custom script.

Hope that helps.

Pat

[IscariotJ]

°) Don't Improve the 3D support on GMA 950, please

don't or let us have an option to disable the 3D

support.

I may be misunderstanding you, but that option already exists....

[rhind]

You can modify the suspend/resume scripts inside the

guest to do what you want. Launch the VMware Tools

UI inside Windows and select the scripts tab. You can

override the default included scripts to do whatever

is supported from inside a script, which I would

assume could even lock the UI first though I haven't

tried it personally.

Hi Pat, thanks for the hint. A quick search on the web revealed this command:

rundll32 user32.dll, LockWorkStation

And it works a treat.

Cheers

Russell

[rhind]

Take a look at the default scripts, make a copy, and

try to add screen locking to the suspend script and

point at your new custom script.

Hi Pat, another request that could be done with a script mod then: I've mentioned previously that if you suspend from unity mode, and re-start, it re-starts in single-window mode which is fine, but the window size (and thus desktop size) has been changed from when you were last actually in single window mode (if you don't have the window maximised as I don't).

Switching to single-window mode manually before suspending fixes the issue. So is there a command-line call we could add to the suspend script that would force a switch back to single-window mode before suspending? That would fix this problem also.

Cheers

Russell

[steve_goddard]

Thanks, we are working on the performance issues over the next few months. In particular, for Windows VMs.

[steve_goddard]

Sorry, that last reply was to jimsold and is a reference to shared folder performance that he reported.