VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

A while back I compared the three biggest Virtualisation products for the Mac. Parallels, VMware Fusion and VirtualBox are all impressive products that performed equally, and I used the free Virtualbox for my occasional Windows needs. Parallels was part of the recent MacUpdate bundle which I bought, so I’ve been using that most recently. It’s been running well and seems more responsive than the previous versions I tried.

The reason for this recap is that VMware Fusion 2 beta 1 has been released, and adds some interesting new features. Multi display support will please some users, even if support for eight monitors is very niche. Importing Parallels and Virtual PC machines is a useful if late addition. DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 is perhaps the most interesting, and I’m wondering how well this will work on my hackintosh. Perhaps the biggest improvement is that version 2 allows any printer attached to your Mac to be used direct from Windows without installing drivers.

Also new is an updated version 1.6 of Virtualbox. It’s now out of beta, although there are a few things still not supported:

Currently, we are aware of the following restrictions:
•    No support for Host Interface Networking
•    No support for Internal Networking
•    No support for audio input
•    No support for VT-x/AMD-V (rarely required)
•    No support for raw disk access
•    The numlock emulation isn’t implemented yet
•    The VirtualBox kernel extension is currently accessible from all user accounts
Note that we are planning to address all known issues.

Things are certainly moving on in the Mac virtualisation market, so I’ll be trying all three products again this week with some updated results to follow.

Modular Windows

When details of the next version of Microsoft Windows first started appearing, there was much talk of it being a lot more modular in nature. There were even Microsoft demo’s’ of a bare bones ‘MinWin’ that removed the many layers of Vista and gave a fast and compact core that used 40Mb or Ram and 25Mb of disk space. For once it sounded like Microsoft’s engineers were leading the development of Windows 7 instead of the marketing teams.

Unfortunately thing don’t seem to be going the way I had hoped. Arstechnica has an article titled ‘Why modular Windows will suck for Microsoft and suck for you’ that makes a good argument for why it’s not a good idea. It’s all about the way in which Windows will become modular, using software or services that are bought individually or subscribed to. If you want the full Windows package you end up paying more for it, or users who want to strip out the bits they don’t use could get a cheaper deal.

Leopard vs XP vs Vista vs Linux part 2

In part 1 I looked at results from Geekbench, Photoshop and VLC to see how much of an impact the operating system has on application speed. For part 2 I used two more cross platform test, the first person shooter Doom 3 and 3D modeller and renderer Blender.

Leopard vs XP vs Vista vs Linux part 1

I’ve wanted to compare different operating systems on the same hardware for several months, to see how much of an impact the OS has. Now that I have been using my hackintosh daily for over a month with no major issues I felt it was time to start doing some comparisons. One of the benefits of using generic hardware to run Mac OS is that it will happily run any other x86 operating system you care to try. The difficult bit seems to be getting them to co-exist without conflicting.

Hackintosh part 9

I’ve been using my DIY Mac for about a month so it’s time for an update on how well everything is working. I haven’t had any major show stoppers so far, more minor irritations and puzzling behaviours. It’s a pleasure to use the hackintosh and having run Mac OS on several machines in the past the huge performance improvement makes the OS more responsive than ever. I’ve read reviews in the past that say you haven’t experienced Mac OS at it’s best until you try a Mac Pro, and they’re not exagerating.

OS wars: which is the best?

The ‘my OS is better than yours’ arguments have been a bit quiet lately, so PCmag have done their bit to restart the flames. The article compares Mac OS Leopard, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Ubuntu 7.10 across a number of aspects to pick which is the best for a range of different user types, as well as the best overall. I won’t spoil the surprise here so have a read to see who they rate the highest.

VMware Vs Virtualbox, round 2

In the first part of my testing of VMware Fusion and Innotek Virtualbox I looked at boot time and geekbench scores. Since Geekbench had issues on VMware (and I still haven’t got to the bottom of that) I have moved onto real world tests. I used the Adobe Photoshop CS3 trial and VLC for the testing. I’m fairly certain everyone has heard of Photoshop, and VLC is an open source media player for a wide range of operating systems.

Virtualbox

I’ve been toying with VMware Fusion and Parallels for a while now trying to make up my mind which one to settle on, and the decision just got a lot easier. Innotek’s Virtualbox is another X86 virtualiser, with the big distinction of being free. Innotek have just been aquired by Sun Microsystems, so it looks like there won’t be any shortage of funding. I’ve been playing with the latest Beta 3 for OS X hosts, and for a beta product it’s pretty smooth. There are virtual machine additions just like VMware and Parallels so you can freely move the mouse cursor out of the window, and dynamic window resizing is supported. An impressive list of supported guest operating systems including all flavours of Windows from the past 18 years, OS2, Linux 2.2,2.4 and 2.6 kernels, BSD’s, Netware and Solaris. One of the things I wasn’t expecting was support for hiding the windows desktop so only application windows and the taskbar show. It’s called seamless mode in Virtualbox, and operates in the same way as Parallels Coherence and VMware’s unity.

This is looking like an impressive product for all my virtualisation needs, so if testing continues as smoothly as it has so far I won’t be needing anything else. Next up is some benchmarking using geekbench so I will post again when I have the results.

Who makes my next Computer?

It’s the time of year when I take a look at my computer and ask if I want to upgrade anything. My Macbook (first generation 1.83Ghz) has been fairly solid for the year and a half since I got it. Sudden shutdowns were the biggest problem, and after six weeks of use it was off to Apple for a mystery repair. Apple said they replaced a cable and a bracket but the machine came back with a different hard drive as well. Around six months ago the dying battery was replaced for free, but then half the world seems to have suffered from defective batteries.
The source of this latest round of upgrade angst is Geekbench. It’s a processor benchmarking program that lets you compare processor performance in any supported operating system. I tested the VideoPC (Windows XP, Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz) and got a result of 1560. The Macbook was a surprise (Mac OS 10.5.1, Core Duo 1.83Ghz) returning 2304. I still use the VideoPC for a range of video editing tasks, but it’s a noisy power hungry beast. If the Macbook is 50% faster I would be better served moving all my work to the Macbook. especially since UK energy prices are going through the roof.

The Best Free and Open Source Software

Mohawke has several pages of free and open source software recommendations, spread across OS and platform categories. Click the links to view.

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