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Are Mac-based Windows VMs be as good as the real thing?



I'm about to get my eye back into .Net development on Windows and C development on Linux, primarily so I can do a couple of projects I've been promising myself for ages I'd have a bash at. Being the user of a proper computer, this means I need to run Windows on my Mac.


While I could dual-boot it, I guess, I'd prefer to have the two OSs running side-by-side; being old and out of touch I asked my Mac-owning, virtualisation specialist colleague what I should be using and he reckoned VMware Fusion was the way to go.


Step one, then, was to run up Windows 7 and Debian Linux as virtual machines. Debian was an absolute breeze - download the network-install CD image, boot the VM from the virtual CD hooked into the ISO image, answer a few questions then leave it overnight to download and install a boatload of stuff.


Windows is similarly easy to set up, though it was a little disconcerting that the VM hung halfway through unpacking the files at the first attempt. (Oh, and when the installer's really thrashing away, the host OS runs like a dog - but that probably means I just need to tweak the resource allocations a bit).


As I write the Windows installer has unpacked 99% of its files and we're looking good. I'll report back on whether Visual Studio is as usable on a Mac-based Windows VM as it is on a three-year-old HP laptop ...

Tags: applications, mac vmware fusion, personal technology, virtual machines, windows

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