VMWare Fusion - Is it really a VM machine

I used boot camp to dual boot with XP or Leopard. I just installed Fusion. I had to reactivate XP via M$ phone system. It launches OK within Fusion. However, it appears to have hybrid characteristics. For example, the touch pad right click doesn't bring up the context menu in XP. Instead I have to thumb it twice and then the left click brings it up, a la Leopard. Is this really an XP installation? Also, when I tried to boot directly to XP at boot up, XP launched OK but I got a message telling me I had 13 days to activate. What is that about? Irrespective of whether I launch XP using the dual boot, or via Fusion, I am only running a single XP installation at a time and on a single piece of hardware.

Is this really an XP installation?
Some functions are handled by Mac OS X when you're using an emulator.
Also, when I tried to boot directly to XP at boot up, XP launched OK but I got a message telling me I had 13 days to activate. What is that about? Irrespective of whether I launch XP using the dual boot, or via Fusion, I am only running a single XP installation at a time and on a single piece of hardware.
Windows may consider the configuration to be different when it's running in emulation and think it's on a different computer.
(36163)

Similar Messages

I have a 160GB Hard Drive in my MBP and use VMWare Fusion and had a 60GB Virtual Machine running Windows XP. Deleted the Virtual Machine and CANNOT find the 60GB space I desperately need! Anybody out there with a similar problem? Help!

I have a 160GB Hard Drive in my MBP and use VMWare Fusion and had a 60GB Virtual Machine running Windows XP. Deleted the Virtual Machine and CANNOT find the 60GB space I desperately need! Anybody out there with a similar problem? Help!

Thanks - Of Course the first thing I checked and did.
Disc Utility reads as follows:
Capacity : 159.18 GB (159,182,127,104 Bytes)
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Available : 11.47 GB (11,472,896,000 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : Yes Used : 147.71 GB (147,709,231,104 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 139,540 Number of Files : 511,832
Activity Monitor(Disc Usage) shows something quite interesting. Mac HD and Ramanan (Main User) - My hard drive is only 160GB! Would the retired engineer gentleman please note as well. Many thanks. Rams

VMware Fusion Performance: Bootcamp Partition or Virtual Machine?

I'd like to run ArcGIS 9.3 in Windows XP using VMware Fusion. Can anyone comment on the virtues/drawbacks of using a bootcamp partition versus creating a VMware "Virtual Machine"?
With bootcamp partition I can gradually increase the size of the partition as the partition becomes full using Drive Genius, correct?
What about performance?
Thanks!

Visit MacTech.com and read their two benchmark reviews of Parallels, VM Fusion, and Boot Camp.
You cannot "gradually increase the size" of a Boot Camp partition. To change the size you must first delete the existing partition then create a new, larger partition. Doing so will delete the entire Windows system, so be sure to back it up beforehand.

Time Machine isn't backing up VMWare Fusion

Hello,
I understand Time Machine is supposed to backup Fusion Virtual Machines. It doesn't seem to happen for me. I was running Fusion 1.1.3 and my father inadvertently selected "Revert to Previous Snapshot" and lost all my latest files. I assumed I could just restore from yesterday's Time Machine backup--but it's not there. When I launch Time Machine, the 'virtual machines' folder is empty. I upgraded to Fusion 2.0 and it still doesn't seem to backup ('virtual machines' folder is still empty in TM). Anyone have an answer? How does Time Machine store these files?

This from VMWares' web site:
+"VMware Fusion 1.1.2 and Mac OS X Leopard Time Machine Issue Resolved
A bug in the Mac OS X 10.5-10.5.1 operating systems caused the system to fail if Time Machine attempted to back up live virtual machines. *To avoid this, VMware Fusion 1.1 excluded all virtual machines from Time Machine backups.* Apple resolved the Time Machine bug in Mac OS X 10.5.2, so VMware Fusion 1.1.2 now allows Time Machine backups of virtual machines if the Mac is running Mac OS X 10.5.2 or higher. This may result in larger Time Machine backups. If the backups are now too large, you can manually exclude your virtual machines from Time Machine backup and copy them separately to your backup disk.+
I realize you are running 10.5.5 and you have upgraded to Fusion 3. However, any chance you still have some Fusion 1.1 components still installed on the Mac that might be preventing TM from backing up Fusion?
Alternatively, others have not excluded anything in the TM Prefs Pane, yet certain files/folders were not being backed up. They cleared this up by deleting the following .plist.
*Delete Time Machine Preference .plist*
Go to --> Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences (Note: NOT Home / Library / Preferences).
Drag the .plist file labeled,
com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
to the root level of your Macs’ hard drive.
Reboot your computer.
This .plist file is automatically recreated at startup if it is missing.
Now try choosing the external HD in the TM Prefs for backup again.
Perform a backup and see if the missing file now appears in the last backup.
Glenn

Issues launching VMWare Fusion 2.0 after Lion install?

Getting the message "VMware Fusion cannot connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and to access all directories it uses and right to access all directories for temporary files." Other than the Lion install, I have changed nothing on my system. Any suggestions?

Issue was resolved by upgrading to Fusion 3.1 from 2.1

VMWare fusion turning off automatic virtual machine start

Hello,
Possibly not the best forum for this question, but I hope some of you use VMWare fusion to run Windows on your MAC.
I originally used VMWare fusion eacy windows install to install XP Home as my virtual machine with automatic start up of XP home when VMWare fusion starts. I have subsequently created a new virtual machine for Windows 7 release candidate and want to automatically start this rather than XP when VMWare fusion starts. However I cannot fathom out how to stop VMWare fusion automatically loading and starting XP.
Any ideas? I should probably post this to a VMWare fusion forum, but cannot work out how to do that! I can see the appropriate VMWare forums but cannot see any way to post new threads. I do have a VMWare account.
Many thanks for your help.
Paul Hopewell
[email protected]

Hello Paul,
While Bjorn appears to have answered your question (and if so, you should mark the question "answered" BTW — and Bjorn will get credit for answering!), I'm sure you could use the kind of specialist help available from the Mac-Access mailing list discussion group. There are a number of VMWare Fusion users who also use VoiceOver on that list.
HTH
Archie

If I use Time Machine to back up my internal hard drive will it back up VMWare Fusion and Windows Xp?

Apple tells me I need to back up my Seagate 1Tb HD so they can replace it I have just spent several days getting stuff onto it and don't want to re-install XP if I don't have to. VMWare Fusion is running XP (NOT on boot camp). Does Time Machine back up the whole thing?

I am assuming when you refer to the Seagate 1tb drive, you are referring to an internal drive on your Mac?
Time Machine will automatically back up your virtual machine if it is running on your Mac hard drive, unless you have excluded it in Time Machine Preferences. However beware, it will back up an entire copy every time you do anything with your virtual machine, and will rapidly eat up your backup drive space (I lost 6 months of backups doing this) so it is usually better to backup from within Windows to a separate drive.
Presumably you just want to do a one-off backup of the Virtual machine so you can restore it after the drive is replaced. If so, go to the Time machine Preferences pane in System Preferences and click the Options button. If your virtual machine is not listed in the excluded files list it will be automatically backed up. If it is listed, remove it from the list and run a manual backup (it will probably take quite a long time and you will need to make sure you have enough disk space on your backup drive). Then check your backup disk to ensure it is there. Then if you don't want it to backup lots of copies of the VM, go back into preferences and exclude it again.

Mountain Lion procedure to clean up (shrink) a Snow Leopard virtual machine under VMware Fusion 5.0.3

Procedure to clean up (shrink) a Snow Leopard virtual machine under VMware Fusion 5.0.3
1.     Backup your existing Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
2.     Right click the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
                    Click Show Package Contents
                    If there are a number of Virtual Disk files then Fusion is allocating space for the virtual machine in 2 GB segments
                    Close the Package Contents folder
3.     If the Snow Leopard virtual machine is segmented then convert it to a single Virtual Disk.vmdk as follows:
                    Start VMware Fusion
                    Select the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
                    Click Settings > Hard Disk (SCSI)
                    Click the Advanced options disclosure triangle
                    Clear 'Split into 2 GB files'
                    Click Apply
                    This process will take a few minutes to complete. After the conversion is done, continue with the next step of this procedure.
4.     Start the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
5.     Start Disk Utility
                    Select Macintosh HD
                    Click Erase
                    Click Erase Free Space
                    Select Zero Out Deleted Files
                    Click Erase Free Space
                    If a message is displayed stating: "Your startup disk is almost full", click OK
          When the erasure completes, quit Disk Utility
          Shut Down the Snow Leopard virtual machine
6.     Quit VMware Fusion
7.     Right click the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
                    Click Show Package Contents
                    Select the Virtual Disk.vmdk file
                    Click Edit > Copy "Virtual Disk.vmdk"
                    Select your ~/Documents/Virtual Machines folder
                    Click Edit > Paste Item
8.     Rename the "Virtual Disk.vmdk" file in your ~/Documents/Virtual Machines folder to "Original Disk.vmdk"
9.     Start Terminal
                    Change "xxxxxxxx" in the following Terminal command to your short account name.
                              "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager" -r "/Users/xxxxxxxx/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Original Disk.vmdk" -t 0 "/Users/xxxxxxxx/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Virtual Disk.vmdk"
                    Paste this Terminal command (including the leading and trailing quotation marks) into the Terminal window
                    Press the return (enter) key
                    After the process completes and the Terminal input prompt is displayed, quit Terminal
10.     Right click the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine
                    Click Show Package Contents
                    Right click the Virtual Disk.vmdk file and select Move to Trash
                    Move the Virtual Disk.vmdk file from your ~/Documents/Virtual Machines folder to the Mac OS X Snow Leopard package folder
                    Close the Package Contents folder
11.     Start the Mac OS X Snow Leopard virtual machine to confirm that it runs correctly
12.     Right click the "Original Disk.vmdk" file in your ~/Documents/Virtual Machines folder and select Move to Trash

Judy Churchill wrote:
So if the vendor doesn't provide an uninstall program or instructions, we're just stuck with stuff we may no longer need?
Pretty much. You can always erase your hard drive and reinstall the OS. Some people may attempt to talk you through manually deleting files. I try very hard to avoid doing that because 100% of the time, the person I'm trying to help can't find the files and, instead, starts randomly deleting required system files. Then you have no choice but to reinstall the OS.

VMWare Fusion, multiple virtual machines, and external hard drive

I have 3 different distributions of Linux installed with VMWare Fusion. If I was to move the virtual machine files to an external hard drive, would they still work with VMWare Fusion, or would I have to re-install the 3 Linux operating systems to the external hard drive via VMWF?

Hi,
you can move Fusion VMs to external harddisks without re-creating or re-installing them.
http://communities.vmware.com/message/735993;jsessionid=D252883C5D718D096210B83F 43819A88
Regards
Stefan

VMware Fusion ...

SInce upgrading to OS X Lion my version of VMware Fusion is pretty much unusable. I am currently on Fusion 3.13. Does anyone have any tips on how to get my XP or Win7 VMs to run normally? It is so slow that the entire machine is rendered unusable.
I have a 2007 Mac Mini with 4GB and a 500GB 7200rpm disk in it. Ran ok under Snow Leopard. Not great just OK. But now it runs like total garbage. I do need an XP partition for usw in my job. Changepoint doesn't work on any browser but IE.
Thanks in advance ...

Then you may just need to install the new version to see if it's better. If not you can simply not buy a serial number for it. Then you can try using Parallels to see if it's faster. Parallels was definitely faster than VM Fusion comparing the last two versions running under Snow Leopard.
However, I'd guess more RAM would be a help. Lion requires 1 GB more RAM than Snow Leopard. I don't know how many applications you run concurrently, but with only 2 GBs or less allocated to OS X you are stretching. And, it will be aggravated if you have a slowish hard drive with little free space.
You might open 'top' in a Terminal window just to see what's going on:
About OS X Memory Management and Usage
Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Memory Management in Mac OS X
Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
Understanding top output in the Terminal
The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.
Adding RAM only makes it possible to run more programs concurrently. It doesn't speed up the computer nor make games run faster. What it can do is prevent the system from having to use disk-based VM when it runs out of RAM because you are trying to run too many applications concurrently or using applications that are extremely RAM dependent. It will improve the performance of applications that run mostly in RAM or when loading programs.

VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop Benchmark Comparison

This is a quickie benchmark of VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop using Super PI, PC Mark 05, and Passmark.
VMWare Fusion 36932
Parallels Desktop 3094 Beta 2
Notes:
Both virtual machines were allocated with large 10+ GB virtual disks and 640MB of RAM. The VMWare CPU was configured with two processors. The Parallels CPU was configured with 1 (two is not available). VMWare reported the CPU as 1 physical, 2 logical processors running at 2.66 GHz while Parallels reported 1 physical, 1 logical processor running at 9.6 GHz (the combined speed of all four cores on the Mac Pro). The max observed CPU utilization in activity monitor when running under VMWare was 200% and max under Parallels was 173%.
I chose not to compare 1 VMWare CPU vs. 1 Parallels CPU. While Parallels does not support SMP or multithreaded processes on multiple processors the CPU utilization on the Mac went well above 1 core (173%). For this comparison, I wanted to see results of max processing based on what the two vendors have delivered, as opposed to benchmarking the underlying "virtual or hypervisor cpu" on a 1:1 basis. This explains why VMWare was 2x faster than Parallels on some CPU tests.
Both of these products are beta. VMWare is running in debug mode (can not be turned off in this beta).
Caveat emptor on these stats. This was an unscientific exercise to satisfy my curiosity. Some of the extraordinary differences are highlighted with <--.
Platform:
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, 2GB RAM, Nvidia 7300GT
Disk 1 - OS X, 73GB Raptor
Disk 2 - dedicated disk where each virtual machine image was created separate from the OS or any OS-related virtual memory files.
VMWare and Parallels guest OS: Windows XP Professional, SP 2
Comparison Benchmrk
VMWare Fusion 36932 and Parallels Desktop 3094 Beta 2
Super PI Parallels VMWare
512K 8s 9s
1M 20s 21s
4M 1m 57s 2m 03s
PC Mark 05 Parallels VMWare
CPU Test Suite N/A N/A
Memory Test Suite N/A N/A
Graphics Test Suite N/A N/A
HDD Test Suite N/A N/A
HDD - XP Startup 5.0 MB/s 19.54 MB/s <--
Physics and 3D Test failed Test failed
Transparent Windows Test failed 69.99 Windows/s
3D - Pixel Shader Test failed Test failed
Web Page Rendering 3.58 Pages/s 2.34 Pages/s
File Decrypt 71.73 MB/s 67.05 MB/s
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 179.92 FPS 111.73 FPS
HDD - General Usage 4.82 MB/s 42.01 MB/s <--
Multithread Test 1 / Audio Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / Video Encoding Test failed Test failed
Multithread Test 2 / Text Edit 152.85 Pages/s 138.48 Pages/s
Multithread Test 2 / Image DeComp 5.91 MPixels/s 35.4 MPixels/s <--
Multithread Test 3 / File Comp 3.22 MB/s 6.03 MB/s
Multithread Test 3 / File Encrypt 19.0 MB/s 33.26 MB/s <--
Multithread Test 3 / HDD - Virus Scan 27.91 MB/s 25.49 MB/s
Multithread Test 3 / Mem Lat - Rnd 16MB 5.34 MAcc/s 6.63 MAcc/s
File Comp N/A N/A
File DeComp N/A N/A
File Encrypt N/A N/A
File Decrypt N/A N/A
Image DeComp N/A N/A
Audio Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / File Comp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 1 / File Encrypt N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / File DeComp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / File Decrypt N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / Audio DeComp N/A N/A
Multithread Test 2 / Image DeComp N/A N/A
Memory Read - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Read - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Write - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Copy - 4 kB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 16 MB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 8 MB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 192 kB N/A N/A
Memory Lat - Rnd 4 kB N/A N/A
Transparent Windows N/A N/A
Graphics Memory - 64 Lines N/A N/A
Graphics Memory - 128 Lines N/A N/A
WMV Video Playback N/A N/A
3D - Fill Rate Multi Texturing N/A N/A
3D - Polygon Throughput Multiple Lights N/A N/A
3D - Pixel Shader N/A N/A
3D - Vertex Shader N/A N/A
HDD - XP Startup N/A N/A
HDD - Application Loading N/A N/A
HDD - General Usage N/A N/A
HDD - Virus Scan N/A N/A
HDD - File Write N/A N/A
Processor Intel Core 2 9653 MHz Processor Unknown 2661 MHz
Physical / Logical CPUs "1 Physical, 1 Logical" "1 Physical, 2 Logical"
MultiCore 1 Processor Core Multicore 2 Processor Cores
HyperThreading N/A N/A
Graphics Card Generic VGA Generic VGA
Graphics Driver Parallels Video Driver VMWare SVGA II
Co-operative adapters No No
DirectX Version 9.0c 9.0c
System Memory 640 MB 640MB
Motherboard Manufacturer N/A Intel Corporation
Motherboard Model N/A 440BX Desktop Reference Platform
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Microsoft Windows XP
Passmark Parallels VMWare
CPU - Integer Math (MOPS) 112.35 230.31 <--
CPU - Floating Point Math (MOPS) 280.46 588.33 <--
CPU - Find Prime Numbers (OPS) 446.37 676.99 <--
CPU - SSE/3DNow! (MMPS) 2118.56 4737.13 <--
CPU - Comp (KB/s) 2994.16 5952.34 <--
CPU - Encrypt (MB/s) 18.09 36.27 <--
CPU - Image Rotation (IRPS) 598.21 1184.41 <--
CPU - String Sorting (TPS) 2118.81 3672.59 <--
Graphics 2D - Lines (TPS) 220.71 25.15 <--
Graphics 2D - Rectangles (TPS) 189.74 61.8 <--
Graphics 2D - Shapes (TPS) 39.54 13.71 <--
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text (OPS) 190.39 75.88 <--
Graphics 2D - GUI (OPS) 439.77 63.72 <--
Memory - Allocate Small Block (MB/s) 2533.83 2526.21
Memory - Read Cached (MB/s) 1960.5 1906.27
Memory - Read Uncached (MB/s) 1871.79 1826.08
Memory - Write (MB/s) 1687.81 1545.43
Memory - Large RAM (OPS) 60.99 46.37
Disk - Sequential Read (MB/s) 102.11 76.45 <--
Disk - Sequential Write (MB/s) 58.33 50.9
Disk - Rnd Seek + RW (MB/s) 51.4 40.4
CPU Mark 711.08 1432.72 <--
2D Graphics Mark 743.31 176.5 <--
Memory Mark 599.94 580.38
Disk Mark 766.11 606.7
PassMark Rating 557.27 637.35<br>

Thanks for posting these numbers - it's an interesting comparison.
I would expect the final VMWare fusion performance numbers to be quite a bit better than that of Parallels - they have almost a decade's worth of experience more than the Parallels folks in this arena, and a much larger development team to boot.
Once VMWare Fusion is released to the public, I think that you'll see a clearer distinction between the two products. VMWare will continue to appeal to the professional customer, with a more robust feature set and corporate-friendly features (and a correspondingly higher price tag); Parallels will fall more into the consumer/VirtualPC-replacement market. It will be interesting to see how Parallels will be affected when (and if) VMWare player is ported to OS X.
Interesting about the Parallels performance stats on a native partition - looks like almost enough reason to avoid the bootcamp partition approach altogether. Sharing a native windows installation with a VM in parallels is a pretty scary situation in any case, as the two environments have entirely different hardware configurations. Do-able, but there is some black magic involved (if you want to see an example of what I mean, try to move a windows installation from one machine to another w/different hardware sometime - it ain't pretty); I wouldn't try this in a production scheme unless I had REALLY good backups.

Vmware Fusion Beta for Mac OSX Released Today

I don't know if this is the correct forum; if it's not, please pardon me.
VMware Fusion Beta for Mac OSX has been released today. This product, while the developers admit has some bugs in it, promises to make virtual computing a whole lot easier and would eliminate for many (not all) the need to use Boot Camp. The link for this new program is http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/
On that page you can find links for support and forums as well.
If you need a free virtual appliance to use with Fusion, then use this link http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/
Currently, there is no charge for using the BETA program. The VMWare folks are asking people to give feedback on their use of the product.
This is what we've been waiting for to purchase our new MAC. I can say without a doubt that from my own experience with Linux boxes, VMWare is the best virtual solution on the market. It's easy to configure and supports a wide variety of hardware and OSs. I can even move the virtual machines I created under Linux to my new MAC when I receive it.
The time has finally dawned for me to retire the last remaining pc towerbox in my home. My wife and I recently expunged one of those machines earlier this week and are eagerly looking forward to getting rid of the other one.
We am really looking forward to purchasing the new Mac Pro. What makes it especially appealing for us is it's scalability and the fact that we can use our current hardware,including our Kensington Track Ball mouse and current monitor with it, although we are taking a serious look at a new Apple Display as well.
Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to read this post. I am looking forward to joining and my wife is looking forward to rejoining the MAC community.

You might try the VMWare beta forum:
http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID=371
Susan

Display Questions with Retina and VMware Fusion (Windows 7/8)

Looking to buy my first MacBook Pro and looking to make sure I get the specs I need and have a couple of questions.
I would like to be able to run (simultaenously)
During the day for work:
Windows 7 x64 - 30GB HD - 1 Core - 1GB Ram - Purpose: Has a VPN client that allows me to VPN and RDP only
Windows 8.1 x64 - 60GB HD - 2 Cores - 4GB+ Ram - Purpose: Office 2013 installed on this VM and all my other work applicatons (light weight)
OSX 10.10 - Whatever it can take - Light Web Browsing etc while at work.
After work:
Guess it doesn't matter really - i'd like to play games (bootcamp fine) if possible too. Nothing crazy so barely worth mentioning.
My main questions:
Display: Iris Pro or nVidia - Can the base 15 inch GPU/CPU handle the two VMs at the same time plus the host OS (OSX) without hiccups?
Display: How does VMware Fusion recognize the discrete GPU - will the system be smooth/quiet without activating it?
Battery life: Virtualization is pretty heavy battery wise. Does anyone know what happens to the battery when you're running a couple VMs?
Display: How is running Windows 7/8 on a MacBook with a specifically retina display? Do the Windows PCs look really ugly/blurry due to such a high resolution?
What is the minimum hardware required for these VMs to run fast and responsive? (CPU/GPU/RAM only)
Thanks!!

Sorry - we're users here, just like you, and some questions just get lost sometimes.
The fastest hardware you can buy, the easier you'll be able to run Windows. If you use Boot Camp to run Windows (7, 8 or 8.1) the machine will run at it's best. If you want to run Windows alongside the Mac OS, you'll need to use a VM application (I use Parallels - I've tried VMwareFusion but like Parallels better and it just works best for me).
So, to your questions:
The Retina machine with the NVIDIA GPU will be the fastest - it's a faster processor and has more VRAM.
Any VM is going to use resources - how much RAM, for example, is up to you. I have 16 GB of RAM and 8GB dedicated to Parallels/Windows 7 Pro.
I wouldn't (and you really can't) run a VM for very long on battery. If you're using VM's, that's the time to plug into mains. Running a 'couple' of VM would put further heavy use on your GPU, CPU and shorten your battery life.
I would make sure to get a good, fast quad-core i7 processor, the 2GB of VRAM NVIDIA GPU and the maximum amount of RAM (16GB).
Good luck,
Clinton

Bootcamp and VMWare Fusion, possible problem with Bootcamp, cant see USB.

Hey,
Would really appreciate your help. So I have MBP mid 2010 with the latest version of OSX Mountain Lion and decided to install Windows 7 on it. I gave it to the professional IT guy, who installed Windows 7 through the latest version of VMWare Fusion. It is not bad overall, but at times incredible slow (which might be because of my slow processor).
So I decided to install Windows 7 through the BootCamp Assistant - USB way. And did the following steps:
1)Format USB, put Windows 7 .iso image on it
2) Installed the latest Windows software through the Bootcamp (step2 tick). However, it said that the latest version would be installed only after Windows 7 is installed (in step3 tick). I clicked OK and moved to Step 3
3) I started Installing Windows and had a few errors (which were solved by repairing the HDD after rebooting in recovery mode), but all went fine until almost the end. Before the bar almost moved to the end my macbook went to reboot and I though it was all done and ready. I clicked the alt at *ding* sound and no USB was detected.
I checked disk utility and the thing was portioned.
I was thinking that MBP doesn't recognize the second Windows installed, and VMWare Fusion needs to be deleted in order to run Bootcamp. I haven't deleted anything, wanted to ask for advice first.
Any one could think of what's wrong? Thank you.

You can only install Windows from a USB in one of these computers:
- MacBook Pro with Retina display.
- MacBook Air.
- Mac mini (Mid 2010 and newer).
- iMac (Late 2012).
Your Mac doesn't support the Windows installation through a USB drive. However, you have installed Windows through a USB drive. What did you do?
You did an EFI installation (or a native installation). Apple doesn't support this option because of the huge number of problems it gives, and you have probably erased OS X (or you erased the Windows partition that Boot Camp created, both possibilities). The error you mentioned in 3) was probably that the Windows installer detected that you have a MBR disk instead of a GPT one, and you erased everything.
First of all, to make sure that you erased everything, hold the Option (Alt) key while your Mac is starting. If you see the OS X partition, start up from it, and make a complete backup of your files with Time Machine.
Then, what I recommend you is to erase the whole drive by starting in Internet Recovery (hold Command, Option and R keys while your Mac is starting), and use the Time Machine option to restore your files

Help! Vmware Fusion and windows vista suck up memory fast.

Hi,
I'm running windows Vista x64 Edition through vmware fusion (v2.0) on my macbook (intel 2.4 ghz) and its sucking up memory really fast. I don't have any snapshots and for the moment the virtual machine takes up about 26 gb of my memory. Everytime I start windows with vmware I immediately lose about 1gb of free space on my macbook, which I then recover after closing down vmware, so I guess that's normal. However my memory keeps on decreasing constantly when using vista, without me doing anything else than using internet explorer (no gaming or downloads) and I never get that memory back. I can't seem to understand what causes this constant and rapid memory loss (it can go up to 2gb of memory loss in an hour). (I also get an error message when starting vmware stating :"serial0: Failed to connect to the Virtual Printer daemon after 25 attempts.", but I think its irrelevant).
Here are some specifics on how i set the settings for vmware:
* Processor: 1 virtual processor - RAM: 1084 MB -Autoprotect:disabled -Hard Disk: SCSI Bus type, 40GB disk size, pre-allocate disk space unchecked, Split into 2GB files checked.
I also tried entering the windows Vista x64 Edition in my virtual machine library by right-clicking and selecting "show package content". I noticed there were files named "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s0xx.vmdk", ranging from "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s001.vmdk" to "Windows Vista x64 Edition-s021.vmdk" and files named "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s0xx.vmdk" ranging from "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s001.vmdk" to "Windows Vista x64 Edition-000001-s021.vmdk". These files take up most of the 26GB of memory of my virtual machine.
I would be grateful for any suggestions as my vmware fusion is rendered useless by this problem (under 2,2GB of free space on your computer you can't even start the virtual machine so I've had to delete tons of stuff to keep it running) and I badly need vista for my studies.
Thank you for your help!

Please post questions regarding Fusion on VMWare's own forums since this forum is for troubleshooting Apple Software Update for Windows, a software package for Windows designed to update Apple products that run on Windows, and not related to Fusion
http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/desktop/fusion

VMWare Fusion - Is it really a VM machine

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