VMware Fusion 4 has transitioned from a promotional price of $49.99 (when the usual price was $79.99) to a permanent price of $49.99.

In other words, the price is the same $49.99, but it is no longer a promotional price.

VMware Fusion 4 lets you run your Windows and Mac applications side by side without the need to reboot. With more than 90 new features and optimized for multi-core Macs and OS X Lion, VMware Fusion 4 is better than ever.

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New low price set for VMware Fusion

Some new VMware Fusion Resolution Path KBs are being queued up for release over on the official Knowledgebase. Remember ResPaths?

Simply put, a Resolution Path takes a common issue (e.g., “I can’t get an internet connection in my VM!” or “My VM won’t turn on!”), and lists of all the steps that might be necessary to fix the problem. Some of the steps will be written out in the article (or direct the reader to the Fusion Help!), some of the steps may be links to Microsoft or Apple KB articles, and most of the steps will be links to other of our KB articles that detail a specific issue or action.

We hope that these ResPaths will give users a sense of direction, and keep them from asking, “Okay, that didn’t work, now what?”. We think the paths can also be valuable to us, as a guide for what else we can suggest to a customer – especially on an initial phone call, when they need some direction.

If the paths don’t work, we encourage the customers to open support tickets. If you find the paths don’t work, please provide feedback (at the bottom of each KB) to let us know what else to include!

We have 28 Resolution Paths, in 8 areas. (The areas are: Installation, Startup Issues, Virtual Disks, Peripherals, Networking, Performance, Tools Issues, and Boot Camp & Activation.) There are about 260 steps between those 28 documents (but most steps are used several times; there aren’t that many different articles in play).

Some of the steps are actions for the reader to take, and some of the steps are articles that just give the customer background information (if they’re following a path about a slow network connection, we assume they’ve already followed or don’t need the path for no network connection!), related information (if they’re following a path about the VM using 100% of the Guest’s CPU, they might want to see the path about a VM using 100% of the Host’s CPU), or specific situational advice (if they’re troubleshooting a problem with Unity, they might want to read the article about Unity and UAC – but that won’t be relevant to everyone).

There’s an on-going blog series talking about specific paths.

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Fusion Resolution Paths

Hello, everyone,

Wanted to share a new VMware blog by Elliott Stewart for the personal desktop product documentation. The new blog addresses documentation questions, provides troubleshooting tips, and provides fresh information on Workstation, Fusion, Player, and ACE.

http://blogs.vmware.com/vanswers/

You can RSS-subscribe to the blog or follow Elliot on Twitter at @elliottvmw.

Welcome Elliot!

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Finding vAnswers blog

Right now the top 2 problems confronting users of VMware Fusion are the following:

• No network connection after upgrading Fusion 2 and Windows XP (1016466)
• Troubleshooting Fusion 3 network issues in a Windows 7 virtual machine (1017565)

The second one is specific to problems with a Windows 7 VMs, the first deals with changes in the network connection handling between Fusion 2 and Fusion 3 and changes in network drivers between Windows XP and later versions.

If you are running into networking issues with Fusion lately, definitely check out these two articles, they can save you a lot of time and frustration.

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Top 2 Issues for Fusion Users

Someone asked me what the impact would be if a VM is installed with the wrong OS type.

My first thought was that this probably would introduce some performance issues, but then it hit me that this would cause the incorrect VMware Tools to get installed in the VM, leading to all sorts of unintended behaviors. Even worse, if the correct MCA/MCE architecture is not presented to the guest during boot I don’t think it will start at all. We use guest OS type to get this info (it only matters during boot as far as I know).

How to fix it:

1. Power off the VM.
2. Modify via GUI option General of the properties of your VM.
3. Power on the VM.
4. Reinstall the correct VMware Tools.

Anybody know of any more gotchas associated with having the wrong OS type specified for your VM?

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Impact of wrong OS type for VMs

The day has come (and gone) for the official release of VMware Fusion GA.

In case you haven’t heard, VMware Fusion is the most seamless way to run Windows on your Mac without rebooting. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Fusion last Thursday (http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070802/fusion-is-latest-way-for-macs-to-operate-windows-pc-software/)and since then we have seen a plethora of press coverage. List price is said to be $79.99 per user.

While I have not had a chance to test Fusion myself, I hear it is very fast, stable, and the install just works.
Minimum Requirements for VMware Fusion
* An Intel-based Mac (to run 64-bit operating systems, an Intel Mac with a Core 2 Duo or Xeon processor is required)

• 512MB of RAM (1 GB or more recommended)
• 275MB free disk space for VMware Fusion
• 1GB free disk space for each virtual machine (10 GB or more recommended)
• Mac OS X version 10.4.9 or later

Features of VMware Fusion:

• VMware Fusion virtual machines can use 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems.
• VMware Fusion supports Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems in virtual machines.
• Virtual machines can have multiple virtual processors, taking advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips in Intel Macs.
• VMware Fusion supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X will work in a virtual machine.
• Cut and paste text between your Mac and your virtual machines, drag and drop files, and create shared folders on your computer so you can easily share files and folders.
• Unity view displays your Windows virtual machine applications directly on your Mac desktop.

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VMware Fusion Released

There’s a lot of buzz surrounding VMware’s Fusion product in case you hadn’t noticed. If you are one of those watching this closely you can download Fusion beta 2 now!

VMware Desktop Virtualization for Mac

Some new features include:

• Experimental 3D graphics (gamers rejoice!)
• Snapshots (nice!)
• Run Microsoft Vista (no thanks ;^)
• Improved Networking & Virtual Hardware (VMware – you rock!)

See the release notes for more details.

See this blog entry and join the Fusion discussion!

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Fusion Beta 2 Released

Have you seen the 3D graphics capabilities of the Mac OS X VMware Fusion?

Overview of the 3D capabilities of VMware virtual machines, including gaming

Screencast of the new beta version of the VMware Fusion, great virtualization tool for Mac

Vmware fusion demo at vmworld

Technorati Tags: Fusion, MAC, Vmware, VMWare Fusion

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Mac OS X VMware Fusion Demo