As it happens, I know a VMware Senior Technical Account Manager, so I asked him for a free Fusion license. Shortly afterwards, I had my license in hand. Unfortunately, my request for a second Fusion license to offer for a MLMUG raffle was declined.

Before I continue, let me answer a question that comes up frequently when talking about Mac virtualization software. We all know that Apple makes the most user-friendly and reliable operating system and computers, so why would anyone need to run an operating system other than Mac OS X on a Mac? No operating system can meet everyone's needs.

I recently decided to earn a Master of Science degree in Health Informatics. This is a new 2-year evening graduate program offered by Temple University. Health Informatics is one of the top ten growing fields. If you are interested in learning more about this program, check out this web site for information: www.temple.edu/chp/departments/him/MSinHealthInformaticsProgramOverview.htm

As with most areas of information management, Microsoft is a major player, and Health Informatics is no exception. I expect that most of my graduate coursework will require the use of Microsoft Office features that work only on Windows, such as Access, Visio, and Project. It is also much cheaper for anyone who has an Intel-based Mac to buy Fusion and Windows, then it is to purchase a separate computer on which to run Windows.

A virtual machine (VM) is essentially an application window in Mac OS X where an operating system (e.g., Windows) is run. The advantage of running Windows in a VM is that you can use native Windows applications directly from Mac OS X as if they were native Mac applications. That way, you get the best of both worlds, without having to reboot your Mac each time you want to switch between a Windows and a Mac application and without having to devote precious desk space to a separate computer. It is like being able to have your cake and eat it too. VMware is also available for other Intel-based boxes, not only Macs. Downloading and installing Fusion was easy. I started out with Fusion 2.0.4. After a few weeks, Fusion 2.0.5 was available for free. I chose to do the update, which took me to VMware's web site where I could read about the features of 2.0.5 and download it. I like software updates that work this way because it gives me the opportunity to learn about them before I do the update and it's more secure then the update procedure that many packages such as Adobe Acrobat Reader uses. Downloading and installing the update took only a few minutes.

According to Fusion 2.0.5 update's release notes, it offers experimental support for Snow Leopard, improves processor utilization of idle virtual machines, adds support for some additional operating systems, and fixes approximately 80 bugs. Details of those bugs are stated in the release notes.

This October, Microsoft will add Windows 7 to its operating system lineup. Since Windows 7 is due on store shelves soon, I decided to try the free beta 64-bit edition. Windows 7 promises to be much better than Windows Vista in several ways. It requires less memory, less powerful hardware, and it has better graphics, compared with Windows Vista.

Since this is a review of Mac software, I won't say much more about Windows 7 here. Suffice it to say that Windows 7 can best be regarded as a lot less annoying than Windows Vista. A "feature" of Windows Vista that annoys me a lot is its many pop-up warning balloons. Windows 7 allows one to group those pop-up nagging windows in a separate viewing area. One feature that I really like in Windows 7 is its games folder. Unlike Leopard, Windows 7 comes pre-installed with several games. Apple should include more games with Leopard. I particularly like the Mahjong Titans game in Windows 7, which is highly addictive.

Anyway, I went through the procedure to install Windows 7 RC1 as a boot camp volume. This worked well, although it was a slow process. I then fired up Fusion and told it to treat my boot camp volume as a virtual OS disk. This also worked well. I was up and running with Fusion and a Windows 7 VM only a few minutes after installing Windows 7.

If the need ever arises (which is doubtful), I can still use my MacBook Pro with Windows 7 at native hardware speeds by holding down the option key while restarting it. Note that Windows 7 is not yet supported by either Fusion or boot camp. Even so, this combination works well, although one feature is broken. File sharing between Windows 7 and Mac OS X doesn't work. This is explained on the Fusion FAQ. I am sure this file sharing glitch will be resolved once Windows 7 is officially released.

When I installed Fusion and Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, it only had 2GB of RAM. I quickly saw that Fusion uses a large chunk of that 2GB of RAM and Windows 7 uses nearly 2GB. As a result, there wasn't much memory space left for Mac OS X. With only the 2GB of RAM in my MacBook Pro, Windows 7 works well when I boot into it natively (by holding the Option key down while starting up) because it doesn't need to share memory with Mac OS X or Fusion.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 ran much too slowly as a VM with only 2GB of RAM. Simple tasks such as opening my documents folder with only one document in it took nearly a minute. The Mac OS X Activity Monitor showed more than 100% of my MacBook Pro's memory was in use. The excess amount (over 100%) was being stored on disk. Since the contents of the RAM were being written to the disk, disk utilization spiked. My MacBook Pro's battery power dropped quickly because the disk was spinning so much.

Upgrading my MacBook Pro to 4GB fixed that problem. Adding more RAM on a MacBook Pro is inexpensive and fairly easy. I did the job myself using a pair of RAM chips from crucial.com and the screwdriver from my eyeglasses repair kit.

When I use just Mac OS X and native Mac software, the extra RAM is of little benefit. The difference becomes obvious when I start Fusion and Windows 7. With only the 2GB of RAM, installing Windows 7's automatic OS updates took at least an hour in virtual mode. Now, installing Windows 7 updates takes only a few minutes. In addition, Microsoft Word 2007 starts up much faster in Windows 7 in Fusion then Word 2008 does in Mac OS X 10.5.8.

I run Parallels on my desktop MacPro in my office. It is difficult for me to compare the performance of Parallels with Fusion because I run them on different Macs. My MacPro has a faster disk than my MacBook Pro. My MacPro also has 6GB of RAM and I run Vista on it, not Windows 7.

Both Parallels and Fusion offer a feature in which the virtual guest operating system's running applications can appear on the desktop and Dock as if they were native Mac OS X apps. For example, if I open a document in Word 2007 on Windows 7, an icon for it will appear on the Dock in either Parallels or Fusion. There are differences in how the two packages handle this feature, but it is essentially the same either way. On both virtualization packages, this feature is off by default.

In Parallels, this feature is called "coherence mode." Fusion calls it "unity mode." Either way, you get the option of hiding the Windows environment and using Windows (or other OS) apps as if they were Mac OS X native apps. You can even launch the guest operating system's apps from the Dock if you wish. I do not use this feature much because I am content to have my Windows apps appear in a guest operating system window. In fact, I wrote this review using Word 2007 in a Fusion window. I guess I am old school, but when I run an operating system, even Windows; I want the full experience of it, not just the running applications.

When I copy and paste text from a document in Mac OS X to a document in Vista via Parallels, I have to use Command-C to do the copy on the Mac OS X side, then Control-V on the Vista side to paste the text into the document. In Fusion, I can copy and paste by using the command key modifier in both the Windows guest OS and Mac OS X, so I don't have to keep remembering to use the Control key modifier when I am in the Windows 7 virtual environment. That's a nice feature. Note that other Command keys do not behave the same way in Windows as they do in Mac OS X via Fusion. For example, Command-S in Windows 7 brings up the start menu, rather than a command to save the current document.

Fusion also has a feature for laptop users, which I appreciate. It is an option that is turned off by default, but clicking a button in the set up window for any Windows virtual machine allows you to have the guest operating system monitor the laptop's battery. If the battery's charge gets too low, Windows will display a warning in a pop-up window. This is one of the few times that I do not mind seeing a pop-up warning window and this even works with Windows 7, despite it not being supported yet.

Do I recommend Fusion or Parallels? I am leaning more toward Fusion because it's easier to set up and configure then Parallels and it has some benefits that Parallels lacks. The primary reason is that you can use Fusion to create a virtual machine with a guest operating system, such as Windows XP, Vista, Linux, or Solaris, then install whatever apps you want into the virtual machine. Once you are done setting up the virtual machine, you can then easily copy it onto any other computer that runs VMware (not just Fusion) to run it.

For those of you who're into experimenting with malware to see how it behaves, the best way to do that is to set up a VM, install whatever operating system you want in the VM, than make a backup copy of the resulting file. Log into the VM's OS, download whatever malware you want, disconnect the VM from your network, and then run the malware to see what it does. After the malware wreaks havoc on your VM, all you need to do to clean up the resulting mess is to delete your tainted VM or replace it with the copy you created before you did your experiment. This is a very common practice by network security specialists.

If you are interested in taking Fusion out for a spin, a 30-day free trial copy can be downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/ so feel free to give Fusion a try. Before you do, I suggest you review the systems requirements carefully, because if your Mac is short on RAM, you definitely will want to add more before you pursue this evaluation.