VMWare Fusion Advice

[Steve Sherrick]

I'd like to ditch the PC laptop that I only use for monitor calibration tools. Looking at VMWare Fusion as an alternative to throw on my 13" MBP Retina. I will literally only use it for calibration tools. My questions, for those who have used it extensively:

• Has it been stable and reliable for you?
• Anything to be concerned about in terms of it messing up my Mac OS environment which has been very stable on this machine?
• It says it is optimized for Yosemite. I'm on 10.9.5. Anything I should be aware of in terms of real world performance issues with 10.9.5?
• Is the Pro version worth the upgrade for what I want to use it for? Basically I'm just looking at being able to use couple of calibration apps.
• Is there a better solution that you would put way above this one? I've seen mostly positive things mentioned about it.

Thank you!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Fusion is great! I like it better than Parallels. That said, both virtualization systems can get tripped up by some USB peripherals and at times USB drivers can be problem if you have calibration tools or other peripherals that need such drivers.

Another way to go is to load Windows on its own partition and use Bootcamp so you can just boot into Windows when you need it. Then you avoid the driver issues and USB schizophrenia altogether. Latest version of VMWare Fusion works just great on 10.10.3. I don't recall what you're missing by not going with the Pro version, but you should be fine without it. Although, Windows through Bootcamp is great unless you want to use the Windows apps/ environment on your Mac desktop without rebooting. You can also do the Bootcamp thing and then use VMWare to run that copy of Windows and have it both ways.

If you decide to use BootCamp, Apple has dropped full support for WinXP and Win7. There are ways to make them work, but just be aware of that.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Thanks Jeff! I think I'll have to use the virtualization method because I'm trying to simultaneously access Mac apps. For example, with Calman I would be using Virtual Forge Pattern Generator and with Lightspace I would try to tie it in with Davinci Resolve when not using a hardware generator.

I only have Windows 8.1. Any thoughts there as to what to avoid or change for a better overall experience? Not a big fan of how that OS is laid out.

Thanks!