A very nice update that should be on the download immediately list of anyone currently using Fusion. I just pulled it down for a seamless update (looks like they’re using the sparkle update library so it’s painless).
On my MacBook Pro 13", my Windows 7 virtual machine has always been pretty sluggish, even when I don’t have all of the graphics goodies activated and the Fusion 3.1 update makes a huge difference. Even before the OS loads, the startup Windows animation is now snappy and indistinguishable from a physical machine.
Navigating the start menu is now responsive without any hesitations, and it seems like applications are loading faster. In short it’s become a usable environment, even with the latest Windows OS. Prior to this I was only using Windows 7 for those applications that really needed the environment, and dropping back to an XP virtual machine most of the time. Now I can realistically start using Windows 7 in a VM on a daily basis.
Another nice touch is the new USB mapping options that will prompt you when you insert a USB device to see whether it should be mapped to the Mac or the virtual machine and whether you want this to a permanent or temporary behaviour. A very nice touch.
My only beef is that when you apply the update, it seems to automatically upgrade the hardware of your virtual machines and I got an Genuine Windows error on the first boot, but reapplying the authorization seems to have fixed that. Not really Fusion’s fault since it’s Windows being trigger happy about any hardware changes.
Kudos VMware!