VMware converter

Now that we Mac folk have a bit of competition on the virtual operating system front we’re starting to see good things develop. Competition is always good for the market right?

So it would seem, as VMware ships version 1.1 of Fusion. I was eager to try out the Converter application and migrate my virtual Parallels Vista installation into VMware. VMware and Parallels have been leap-frogging each other just a bit on the technology front and, while the improvements in Fusion 1.1 are probably relatively minor, I’d like to check them out anyhow.

At first glance it appeared the Parallels conversion was going swimmingly. A quick drag-and-drop of my Parallels disk and viola!, VMware has created a brand-spanking new VMware disk (it did take about 30 minutes to convert). Unfortunately, it went a bit downhill from there. Vista booted up just fine, and during startup I’m reminded to install VMware Fusion drivers—normally an easy task. This time, though, I was in for trouble.

I had been using Parallels desktop sharing—a great feature that allows me to share folders between OS/X and Vista. It does this fun trick by using network mount points—probably with a few custom tricks under the hood, I imagine—resulting in transparent sharing of folders. Drop a file in my OS/X Documents folder and there it is… in Vista’s Documents folder. The problem is, VMware’s Vista seemed to have problems accessing the Parallels network share point. The result: After tinkering for several hours I was unable to install the VMware drivers, without which I’m limited to a low-resolution, 640 by 480, basic computing experience. No good at all.

Apparently the driver installer fails because it can’t check the available disk space on the Parallels network mount point. I was also unable to discover how to remove the mount point.

In the end, I gave up on conversion and simply installed a new Windows XP environment. Since then, I’ve moved away from Parallels and am using VMware Fusion—although I have to admit the feature-to-feature comparison is very close. I tend to feel Fusion is just a tiny bit more reliable and robust, and in this latest update they’ve fixed all of my former gripes. Besides which, Vista itself has shown itself to be bulky and slow (taking up 20GB of disk space to XP’s 5). I’m slowly deleting all those old Vista virtual machines.