Given that Fusion 4 is probably not too far off, I thought I'd create a topic where everyone can post their wishlist for the next major version.
For me, I'm reasonably happy with the functionality of Fusion 3.1.2, so I'm not after any major features/changes (although that may change the more I think about what I want/need from Fusion), but below is my list...
1) Keep the stability which I've come to appreciate from Fusion (I know people bang on about how fast Parallels is supposed to be, but I have tried version 5 and 6 and haven't been able to get a stable VM - it's either really slow, or hangs).
2) If they can they can squeeze more performance out of it (which I hope they can), then the faster the better.
3) Proper full support for multi-threaded CPU's. Currently, the multi-threaded part of a CPU core is not utilised, thereby wasting processing power.
3) GUI interface for various tasks. For example, mounting physical disks/partitions in VM's - I know you can use rawdiskCreator, but there should be a simple GUI for selecting the partitions/disks you want in the VM, with Fusion handling the rest. Another example is disabling snapshots for virtual disks - again it can be done by manually adding a setting into the vmx file, but there should be a checkbox setting in a GUI.
4) Improved performance of shared folders. When accessing a shared folder, I get poor speeds and high CPU usage. In Parallels, it's faster with almost zero CPU usage.
5) Fixes for all bugs I've reported.
I've only one wish, and it has been mentioned already several times:
- I "need" a tree view for my snapshots I started to make several VMs instead of using snapshots because I have no way to tell what snapshot contains what version of the software we have to test
What I don't like to happen, if you implement the Workstations tabbed interface, so that it's not possible anymore, to run VMs side by side. For major releases of our software, I have separate VMs and it's handy to compare them side by side. I didn't find this feature with VMware Workstation on PC.
@andifor: in workstation you can simply drag a tab outside of the main window to have another window.
l0v3r
Thanks l0v3r, but this does not work for me. I can't drag and drop the tabs. Perhaps there is a bug with VMware Workstation 7.1.4, I'll follow up in the VMware Workstation group.
peraphs it's only a feature of the linux version and don't work in windows version.
This is a linux-only feature for Workstation.
OT: Any idea, if this feature will make it into the Windows release?
If I did I couldn't discuss it... future features, policy, etc..
You're right, stupid me 🙂 Thanks anyway for clarification of the Linux Feature.
I would really love to see an iPad or iPhone App.
It not even has to have a VNC / RDP mode like Parallels, but it should give the possibility to start, pause, resume, quit your vms from the road...
Not sure if it is in the pile of other requests, but I would love to see an admin console. Rather than need to ARD to an OS X Server running Fusion, I would love to be able to fire up an app on my Mac that could suspend / restart / shutdown and change settings on the remote VM. If it could tie into RDP for a Windows VM, VNC or Linux and ARD or ScreenSharing for OS X, those would be great to see, but I know that changes the scope of the product a bit more from a desktop to server app.
I have a nice Xserve with plenty of CPU and 10GB of RAM ... would love a bare metal install on that and change my VMs from running within an OS (that can crash and kill the VMs) to under a hypervisor. Again, changing a consumer to server / enterprise app.
In Single Window mode, it would be nice if there was an option to reduce the size of (or turn off) the upper button bar. Currently it is ~80px tall, which a waste of screen real estate for six buttons with large graphics.
Add the option "Show/hide main toolbar", as all those giant button functions can reached via keyboard shortcuts by advanced users.
-Daniel