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VMware Fusion 2 Beta

VMware Fusion 2 BetaThough very happy with Parallels, I have been interested in the performance of the main competition, VMware Fusion.

Get the best of both the Mac and PC worlds with VMware Fusion. With an intuitive Mac-native interface and a wide array of powerful features, VMware Fusion provides the most seamless way to run Windows applications on your Mac.

I am trying out the VMware Fusion 2 Beta on my iMac, it installed just fine as did Windows Vista.

I don’t do a whole lot in Windows, but for some stuff you need Windows such as GO!View for the PSP.

These OEM versions will work with VMware Fusion (and Boot Camp or Parallels). Though as OEM versions you won’t get any support from Microsoft, for that you will need to purchase the full retail versions.

Windows XP Home

Windows XP Professional

Windows Vista Ultimate

Note that Windows Vista Home can not be used with Parallels or VMFusion due it licensing restrictions.

Windows Vista Home Premium

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Why I like Parallels

So here I am installing Leopard on an external drive on my iMac and installing various applications. One application I use now and again is Parallels so that I can run Windows and Ubuntu on my Mac in a virtual machine.

One of the things I like about running an OS in a virtual machine is that I can just copy them from the internal drive to the external drive and do not need to worry about installing Windows again, basically it just remembers where it was when I closed it down previously – even though that was on a different drive running a different version of OS X.

Nice and easy.

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Installing Leopard

So I have my new drive, a 1TB LaCie Poulton, and though it is not as quiet as I would like (well a 7200rpm drive is still quite noisy, but at least there are no noisy fans).

So decided to install Leopard on it and use it as a boot drive for my iMac. The iMac only came with a 250GB drive which is proving problematic, I am hoping with 1TB of space that I can at least have a little more room for “stuff”.

Rather than install Leopard direct, I decided to install from the iMac install disks and then install Leopard on top of that.

Once Tiger was installed, I went straight to Leopard. Once Leopard was installed I then ran Software Update, and of course forgot to change the energy saver settings, so as before, the iMac did a Vista on me and turned itself off whilst downloading a 560MB update – for 10.5.4

I will then need to decide which software to install that I will use.

Wondering if Office 2004 is Leopard compatible (I think it is) and wondering if CS2 is? Problem with both those is that they are both not Universal applications, so both rely on Rosetta as they are PowerPC applications, and as a result are quite memory intensive.

Will certainly be installing iWork ’08 and iLife ’08 and iMovie HD ’06 as well.

Still downloading the updates.

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Quiet External Drive – LaCie Poulton 1TB

Was is only a few days ago I was blogging about noisy external drives when I happened to find myself in the Apple Store in Regent Street in London when I noticed that they had a LaCie Poulton drive on display, switched in and boy was it quiet. So quiet that even when I put my ear to it, I couldn’t hear it!

No fans.

So even though I had only popped in for a look at the Apple Store, out came the wallet and a purchase was made.

LaCie Hard Drive by Poulton

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Noisy external drives

I have always had a very noisy externa LaCie 1TB drive, so noisy that basically I put it on, transfer the files and turn it off.

I have been using an external Iomega 1TB drive recently and though it is much much quieter (I can certainly leave it on) it is still very noisy.

I do have a couple of external 40GB LaCie host powered drives and these are very quiet.

So what I am trying to find is a quiet drive, but a large quiet drive, at least 1TB in size, though 500GB would be fine as well.

Any suggestions?

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Vodafone “hides” price rises

BBC reports on criticism of Vodafone about recent “hidden” price rises.

The National Consumer Council (NCC) has criticised Vodafone for increasing mobile phonecall costs without telling its customers.

Vodafone plans to raise minimum call charges by 25%.

But a letter inserted into July’s bills stated the new price list but failed to mention they were going up.

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Crashing Nokia N95

Over the last couple of days I have been having a few issues with my Nokia N95.

It keeps crashing! So much so that I have had to open it up remove the battery and reboot.

I was using Shozu to upload photographs to Flickr, so was using a third party application, my 3G connection and the camera.

Not sure of the reason behind the freezes and crashes.

Photo source.

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Leopard does a Vista on me…

In the past I have mentioned how sometimes Vista annoys me by doing what it wants, rather than let me get on with stuff, one example which particularly annoyed me was when I was downloading a file (a rather large file) and Vista decided that as I wasn’t actively involved with the computer it would shut itself down!

Now I did think that OS X would not be so selfish and would be more sensible.

Well was I wrong…

Okay OS X is nowhere near as bad as I have found Vista to be, it’s most certainly not perfect.

So what happened?

I had decided to install Leopard 10.5 on my iMac (on an external drive) and after installing from my Leopard install DVD, I went to Software Update to update to 10.5.4, which to my initial horror was a 560MB download, well that’s going to take some time, so I let it get on with it.

So you can imagine my annoyance when I came back to find that the iMac had fallen asleep!

I was downloading a file! No you were downloading a file, you knew you were downloading a file, yet you still fell asleep!

I will give OS X a little credit, at least when I resumed the download it didn’t start it again.

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Well, not having much success…

I have been using a Vodafone USB 3G stick with my Sony VAIO UX1XN with some success now. However downside is that it sticks out the side and I do worry it might break off (which would be annoying).

I do have a T-Mobile phone and a 3G data plan with them, which allows me to use my phone as a modem. This has worked fine on my Mac, but I decided it would be good to use it with my UX1XN.

However I not having much sucess.

I first tried the Nokia N series software, which required about 100MB of stuff to be downloaded…

This eventually installed, and after I had paired with my Nokia N95, I expected things to go smoothly.

However it failed to make a connection as it said that the modem was being used by another application.

This unhelpful error was because the modem drivers needed resinstalling and the help unhelpfully said that, but didn’t say how to do it!

So after a few attempts, I gave up and used System Restore to rid myself of the Nokia software.

I then tried the standard Nokia software (which also works with N series phones) and alas everytime I tried to to get a connection, the Bluetooth software would case a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

Using Windows Me I would get BSOD all the time, with Windows XP it was quite a rare occurence. On Windows Vista on the UX1XN I get them all the time, I keep having Windows Me flashbacks.

After a couple of attempts, I decided to use the VAIO Update feature to see what new drivers  were available.

So have spent the best part of a day, downloading updates and installing them. The automatic updates took their time, but there were a bundle of non-automatic updates, most of which consisted of:

Download update

Uninstall software

Restart

Install new software

Restart

It wouldn’t be so bad, but Windows Vista on the UX1XN takes an age to start up.

Getting there, final update being installed, will try Nokia software again!