Review by FotoPat

I’m a former software QA tester (alpha and beta) so I have quite a bit of impatience with companies that release software that doesn’t work right out of the box on all sorts of machines. A good software company will test their software on multiple configurations. Obviously other users are reporting excellent results, but that doesn’t mean everyone will.

I have used Parallels 3.0 since it came out and I was overall satisfied, but found it a little slow. Fusion 2.0 was released and I thought it would be a great way to get faster speed because that’s what VMware was claiming and many users are reporting.

My biggest beef is the importation of existing virtual machines. I have Win XP on my Mac that I use with Parallels. VMware states that you can import from Parallels. One, the process of importation is NOT intuitive and is made far more difficult than it should be. Whoever designed this interface is not a Mac user.

Second, Fusion refused to accept the import stating that the virtual machine wasn’t properly shut down. So I go into Parallels and make sure that XP was been completely stopped. Quit Parallels and go back to Fusion … oops, couldn’t go back - first time in YEARS I saw the Mac gray crash screen. I have never seen it on my Intel Mac until now.

I’m fine with Parallels. I simply wanted to try Fusion because everyone said it was faster. Yes, I could call customer support, but I that should NOT be necessary. I don’t have patience for this kind of baloney, especially on my Mac. It should work right out of the box, period. I probably have hundred or more programs on my Mac and not one comes even close to being as big a pain as Fusion was in terms of installation.

Obviously many users have seen great results. I did not. Tread carefully or perhaps wait for VMware to release a major update.