Review of Parallels Desktop 3 and VMWare Fusion 2

The first Mac software that I bought since I owned my first MacBook Pro is Parallels Desktop 3.0, and that is 1 year ago. I have been using Parallels since then, upgrading to their latest build every now and then, until I try out VMWare Fusion 2 last week.

I have to say I am very impressed by VMWare Fusion 2 so far!

Here is my personal review between Parallels Desktop 3 and VMWare Fusion 2.

Parallels Desktop 3

* This review is based on Parallels Desktop 3. Parallels Desktop version 4 is out and some of the issues that I have with version 3 might have already been fixed.

Thumbs Up

• Supports wide variety of popular OS and quite easy to create VMs and install OS.
• Include the Parallels Transporter that allows you to import VMs created by other products into Parallels compatible VMs - note that this does not always work. I tried to import a VMWare image that contains multiple files but failed. However, a single VMWare image with Windows 2000 works.
• Constant release/build cycle - You will receive update every now and then. Makes me feel like the $ is well spend.

Thumbs Down

• Slow, slow and slow. I have a VM with Windows XP installed but it takes ages to start up. During startup, it makes my Macbook Pro freeze occasionally (not even switching between different applications). The response is quite sluggish.
  
• Network between the VM and the host (MacBook Pro) seems to be problematic. I can access the internet from VM but when it has problem accessing the LAN machines.
• Printer setting in the VM also problematic. Because of the problem of accessing LAN machines, the VM cannot see the network printer and hence I have to convert to PDF and copy to my Mac and print it from there - how tedious.
• Coherence mode have the annoying windows start bar at the bottom.
  

VMWare Fusion 2

Thumbs Up

• Speed - Starting up a VM is just like starting real OS on the actual machine. The speed is amazing. I have imported the Parallels VM (Windows XP) into VMWare Fusion and the startup time probably around 10 times faster than Paralles. How amazing! This might be something to do with VMWare Fusion can utilise the 2 CPUs on the Mac. Also when starting the VM, the Mac is not frozen (by the way, I have only 2GB of RAM).
• Seamless network and printer support - The same VM imported from Parallels and run with VMWare Fusion. The network and printer settings do not work in Parallels but magically just work in VMWare Fusion.
• Unity mode (Coherence mode in Paralles) seems to work much better. The windows just look like normal Mac window (although the icons might be Windows specific).
• Convert to full screen and back seems pretty quick and snappy.
• Haven't try it myself - but apparently you can also play most of the 3D games in Windows (with DirectX support).
  
• (I can go on and on with the good things....)
  

Thumbs Down

• Nothing major so far - besides the price of VMWare Fusion is a bit pricey

Having use both VM tools, I strongly recommend VMWare Fusion for Mac because it just works! With my blog's philosophy, tools that we used should make our life simpler...

How to charge and eject your iPod in Linux

This might be uncommon but I found that most of the time, I cannot wait until my iPod is fully charged before switching off/hibernate my MacBook Pro.

I have a Linux server (Fedora Core 8) that runs 24x7. So how about utilising my server to do the work instead?

Here are the steps to charge your iPod under Linux:



1) Sync my iPod with all the songs from my MacBook Pro.
2) Eject iPod from my MacBook.
3) Connect the USB cable to my Linux server.
4) Determine the drive that iPod is using under Linux. Normally it should be an alphabet greater than all existing mounted drive. Execute the following command:

> mount


It should shows something similar to:

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol03 on /data type ext3 (rw)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol02 on /home type ext3 (rw)
/dev/sda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sdb on /mnt/media type xfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)


In this case, /dev/sdb seems to be the last of mounted hard disk. So if I tried:


> mount /dev/sdc /mnt/ipod


Once this is successful, you should be able to perform listing on this directory.


> ls /mnt/ipod



5) You might want to umount the ipod to left it charging (we don't need to mount it for it to be charged because we are not syncing the songs).


> umount /mnt/ipod (if mounted before)


6) In order to fully eject the ipod, we need to execute one more command:

> eject /dev/sdc (or the drive that your ipod is connected to).


7) Next enjoy! Once fully charged, just unplugged from the machine.

Weird Dark Border around Leopard Desktop

Since yesterday a dark border kept appearing in my Leopard desktop. I am currently using six spaces and this dark border only appears in space 2, which I used the spaces for Safari and internet browsing.

The screen looks like:

Posted my problem to Whirlpool, some suggested that it could be the Expose that is doing the trick. I am still don't know what is the purpose of having the dark border around the screen. I did not change Expose configuration.

After a machine restart, it seems alright where the dark border disappear in all spaces. Weird.

Wonder if this is a problem with Leopard? Or somehow I did something that trigger this dark border to appear?

Screenshots Snapshot in Leopard

Today I encountered a situation where I want to take a screenshot of webpages. Being a new Mac user, I am not sure if I could do what is equivalent to "Alt/Ctrl + PrintScreen" in Windows. 

Quick google search reveals this very helpful site. There are quite number of different options to take a screenshot and I was amazed by shortcut keys and varieties. It makes screenshooting a fun activity!

Migrating Outlook Mail to Apple Mail

"Migrating Outlook Mail from my Windows machine to Apple Mail" has been a TODO item since I bought my Mac. Today I have a chance to experiment and import successfully to Apple Mail. Although not perfect but it gets mostly what I want.

Here are the steps that I have done (with help of several websites):

1) Look for where Outlook stores the mailbox, normally you can get this setting via the Preferences or Settings.

2) Use Outlook Express to import all the mail from Outlook (this is because somehow Thunderbird cannot recognise the Outlook Mail).

3) Download and install Thunderbird on your Windows machine.

4) Use Thunderbird to import all emails from Outlook Express (make sure you select Outlook Express).

5) After import, check the "Preferences" or "Settings" under Thunderbird to see where it stores all the email.

6) Thunderbird organises each of the mailbox as separate directory. Copy all the folders that you want to import to Mac.

7) I uses Apple Mail and select File -> Import Mailboxes...

8) Select Thunderbird and select the thunderbird mailbox that you have just copied.

9) Apple Mail will import all the folders and put them under "On My Mac -> Import".

I have to spent sometimes to organise the folder to different level but I got most of the email messages. Although I don't quite like how Apple Mail organise the folder and mail.

Found a problem where whenever you tried to move an email from one folder to another, it does not delete from the source folder. It just greyed out the email in the source folder. When I press delete on that email, it still would not delete it. Is this a defect? Or just I haven't accustom to the way Apple Mail works?