Posts with keyword: fusion

8 entries

Parallels Has a Command Line Tool Too!

Thu Dec 18 08:28:00 2008

When I wrote the head to head review of Parallels and Fusion for InfoWorld, I also did a sidebar on remote control of hypervisors and guests. At the time I wasn't aware that Parallels also has a command line tool called prlctl for managing the hypervisor and controlling guests. A simple "man prlctl" told me all I needed to know and a minute later, I was starting, stopping, and suspending guests from the terminal. The screenshot to the right (click to enlarge) shows it in the process of suspending a Vista operating system guest on my machine. In addition
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Fusion vs. Parallels: The Horse Race Continues

Tue Dec 16 13:13:00 2008

My second review of Fusion and Parallels appeared today in InfoWorld. I reviewed Fusion 1.0 and Parallels 3.0 a little over a year ago. They've both had major upgrades since then, so it was time for another look. The bottom line is that there's not a lot of difference between these two products. They both perform well and do what you'd expect them to. They both have lots of cool features--especially for Windows users on the Mac--the core audience. The differences are minor. While some of those differences might be the reason that you'd prefer one over the other,
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Fusion 1.1.2

Thu May 1 13:26:00 2008

VMWare released a new version of Fusion last week: 1.1.2. There are a lot of little fixes that if they were a problem for you you'll be very glad to have fixed. If not, you might not notice much difference. I'd been bit a few times by Fusion refusing to release USB resources when it quit. Bottom line: if you're not having any issues, no rush.
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Parallels and OS X Instability

Mon Mar 24 13:10:00 2008

Lately, I've had a very rocky relationship with my Mac Book Pro. One of the things that attracted me to OS X was its stability. Over the past several months (before and after Leopard) my MBP has had trouble with sleeping, waking, and weird, inexplicable freezing. Often when the machine woke up, it would the screen would be black and never come back. The machine would freeze at odd times and nothing would unstick it. I couldn't even log in remotely using SSH, so it was pretty stuck. The final straw was erratic mouse behavior. The mouse seemed sluggish
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VMWare Fusion Clock Synchronization

Thu Oct 25 18:36:00 2007

When you install Linux in Fusion, make sure you install the tools. But just installing them isn't enough. Clock synchronization is turned off by default, so you need to start up the tools interface: sudo /usr/bin/vmware-toolbox Then click the box for synchronizing the guest time with the host. If you don't, the guest will lose time.
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What Should I Buy? Parallels or Fusion?

Mon Oct 22 15:02:00 2007

InfoWorld asked me to do a head-to-head review of Parallels and Fusion. That review appeared today. As a frequent user of both virtualization packages, I really enjoyed this review since it gave me an excuse to dig deep on some things and to talk to the product managers for both. One thing is clear: there's some stiff competition between Parallels and VMWare and the users are the winners. These are both great products that perform well. VMWare has a performance advantage--especially when you need multi-core performance. Parallels, I think, has a slight advantage in usability and a pretty big
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Installing Tools in Fusion When They Won't Install

Wed Sep 12 09:43:00 2007

In Fusion (and other virtualization systems) you should install OS tools on the guest OS to make it behave better. This is not something specific to Fusion, this is a general fact of virtualization. Usually, clicking the "Install VMWare Tools" does the trick--especially with Windows. Sometimes, however, it doesn't do anything. On those occasions you need to take over and do it manually. Here's how. First, mount the right ISO as a CDROM image. You'll find these in /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/isoimages Select the right one for your OS. You may need to manually mount the disk. Fedora, for example,
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Install the Parallels Tools!

Thu Apr 12 16:39:00 2007

Yesterday I did something in Parallels that I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't done before--it made a huge difference. I installed the Parallels tools in some guest OS's and compressed and defragmented their disks. The guest OS tools allow the guest OS to play better with the host. The biggest difference you'll notice is that the mouse "rolls" from the guest to the host OS without the need to push funny key combinations to "release the mouse." Not only that, drag and drop and cut and past work. Hurrah! Compressing my disk images cut them in half (6Gb to
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