Playing with VMware Fusion 4.01

Loaded Fusion 4.01 on the iMac last night.  Tried to load my Windows Vista bootcamp install as a virtual machine and it failed, just as it did with Fusion version 3.x...and if true to form, it also horked my ability to boot up straight to Windows using bootcamp.  Since I hardly ever do that any more (since Parallels and Fusion have gotten so much better and faster over the last couple versions) it's not a big deal.  Now I just run Win7 in a virtual machine.

Anyway - My iMac is running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.7 - see previous post as to why not 10.6.8) and I decided to try installing Lion (OS X 10.7) in a Fusion virtual machine.  Guess what?  It worked!  See http://mattgemmell.com/2011/09/14/lion-in-vmware-fusion/ for a good runthrough.   Even updated to 10.7.1 without an issue.  Cool to be running a "guest" OS that's newer than the "host" OS.  Now I get to see if I like Lion, before actually committing to it as my main OS.  Only thing I haven't figured out is how to change the virtual display size....it's running Lion in a 1024 x 768 window which doesn't take advantage of my 1920 x 1200 monitor's screen real estate.  I'll keep you updated if I get that solved.

Currently, I'm downloading Windows 8 Developer Preview so I can follow the procedure at OSX Daily to install it in a Fusion virtual machine....then I'll be able to compare Lion to Win8 to Win7.  Yeah - I'm a geek....

UPDATE:  A query on MacRumors led me to the way to change display resolutions in the Lion virtual machine...I needed to install VMware Tools on the Lion VM....the process of which was a little convoluted, but I finally got it.  You have to shutdown the VM, go into the VM settings, then delete and re-add the CD/DVD drive so it just says "Superdrive".  Then restart the VM, go into the VM menu and choose install VMware Tools.  You'll get a couple windows telling you the machine is already using the drive.  Just click OK and the tools installer window should pop up.  Now I'm able to use Lion in a much larger window.

Also played with Windows 8 for a couple minutes....to say it'll take some getting used to is an understatement.  It took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to do get to the "shutdown" option.  I have a feeling it's going to change A LOT between this developer build and the release product.