Hot on the heels of the release of VMWare Fusion 3, the folks at Parallels have released Parallels Desktop 5, matching the features of VMWare Fusion 3 and adding some new ones to boot. You can get a quick overview of the newest features in the Parallels press release.

Parallels Desktop 5 costs $79.99 for the full package, or $49.99 to upgrade from either Parallels Desktop 3 or 4. Parallels is also offering a free upgrade key for those who bought Parallels 4 after Oct. 1. This is also valid for Parallels 4 purchases up until Dec. 31. Customers must retrieve this before Jan. 15, 2010.

Besides the obvious two features, fully supporting Snow Leopard and Windows 7, some of the awesome new features are best shown in screenshots.

Finally we have the Aero interface! This works in all view modes, not just full screen.

When in fullscreen mode, you can now configure a HotCorner to easily switch back to the OS X side with just your mouse.

The new Crystal View is a modified Coherence view, hiding all icons in the Dock and the OS X Parallels menu bar, moving access to menu items and a newly created folder icon in the Dock containing all your windows shortcuts.

The new MacLook feature automatically installs a custom Windows Theme (similar to those offered by products such as StarDocks’ Window Blinds) giving all your windows applications an OS X look and feel.

If you combine MacLook with Coherence View or Crystal View, the lines between native OS and virtual OS become even more blurred.

More importantly than all of that, its super fast. For me, it’s much much faster than VMWare Fusion 3. For the last few months, I’ve been in the closed beta program for Parallels 5, and the lack of communication and new builds had made us a bit weary. Sure enough, yesterday it released version 5 with none of the testers having a clue, and there are some new features we’d never seen (such as MacLook, multi-gesture support and Crystal view).

When VMWare Fusion 3 was released, I downloaded the trial and was impressed at how easy it was to migrate a copy of my Parallels Windows 7 VM over to Fusion. I wasn’t as impressed, however, at the sluggish performance of VMWare Fusion 3 when the VM loaded up. Running MS Access 2007 and Visual Studio windows became lethargic. The same operations under Parallels 5 just flew along with no issues. It’s important to note that I had the same basic VM configuration across both (1.5GB RAM, 1 CPU allocated), using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit edition. Your mileage may vary, as this was most certainly not a scientific comparison study.

Parallels has also published a video of Parallels Desktop 5 in action.

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VMware Fusion 3 for Mac is now available. That’s right, new virtualization software for your Mac, conveniently timed for the release of Windows 7. Actually, it’s very likely the release of VMware’s latest iteration of its OS virtualization software, Fusion 3, got its release date precisely because of Microsoft’s street date for its latest operating system, because Fusion 3 is specially designed to support Windows 7.

Fusion 3 comes just over a year after VMware released Fusion 2, in September 2008. A year is a long time in the life cycle of a piece of software, and in the case of Fusion, the lapsed time between versions shows in the numerous improvements made to the program that allows you to run another OS on a virtualized machine inside of OS X.

As mentioned above, Fusion 3 goes out of its way to make sure your Windows 7 virtualization experience is as seamless as possible. That includes things like support for Windows Aero, Flip 3D and Windows Aero Peek visualization effects, and the ability to run OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c, which should help with some of your gaming needs, especially if you’re into older MMOs that don’t have a native Mac client.

VMware’s sales tactics for Fusion 3 also focus on recent switchers who are having trouble adjusting to their new and unfamiliar environment on a Mac. For example, the improved Migration Assistant helps you copy your entire PC onto a virtual machine on your new Mac hardware quickly and easily using an Ethernet connection. VMware goes as far as to say it works “just like” Apple’s own Migration Assistant for setting up or restoring a Mac-based computer.

There’s also a lot of improvements under the hood, including a new 64-bit native core engine for Macs that can handle it. That means that Snow Leopard users will be getting the most bang for their buck with the latest version. Memory usage on all Vista and Windows 7 machines is also greatly reduced, so in general, you should experience much snappier performance.

Finally, a lot of improvements have been made to VMware Fusion’s Mac Unity mode, which makes the virtualization experience much more integrated than it is in its default, windowed configuration. The list of new features is long, but some highlights include the ability to search for Windows apps like Mac ones, assigning the new always-on Applications menu to a hotkey of your choosing, accessing recently opened documents using Windows apps, full Exposé and Dock Exposé support for all Windows apps, and 3D gaming/1080p video playback while in Unity mode.

Fusion 3 retails for $79.99, but if you’re upgrading from Fusion 1 or 2, you qualify for a special price of $39.99, or $59.99 with a subscription that includes major version upgrades for the next 12 months. Judging by the last upgrade schedule which saw Fusion 3′s release falling one month outside that bubble, that subscription option isn’t looking all that appealing. If you’re picking it up, let us know how you find it.

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In the ever leap-frogging world of desktop virtualization for the Mac, VMware has announced that it will make its next hop (I won’t venture to say who’s ahead at this juncture) by the end of October…or the 27th, if you go by its blog. So in just a few weeks, version 3 of Fusion will be available for mass consumption. Some of the announced features are as follows.

The big news, of course, is Snow Leopard optimization, where Fusion jumps onto the 64-bit bandwagon. This should bring some interesting performance boosts to those who use virtualized environments heavily. As a regular Windows VM user (by necessity) I’m really looking forward to this!

If, on the other hand, you’re a Windows user stuck in a Macintosh machine, you’ll be glad to know that Fusion 3 is the first to support Windows Aero and Flip 3D features found in Windows 7. From my perspective, this is cool, but when I run Windows in a VM, it’s bare bones, and just for the program or two that I require. But I’m sure this capability will make some people quite happy.

There is also greatly improved graphics support. I’m not much of a PC gamer, and as such don’t follow these terms very much, so straight from the release, VMware Fusion 3 is the “first to support DirectX 9 Shader Model 3.0 3D graphics and now adds support for OpenGL 2.1.” Sounds neat.

Presumably taking a cue from the competition, there’s “Switching Made Easy,” so that you can now migrate to OS X by converting your Windows installation to a VMware Fusion image, easier than ever before. (My guess is that someone will make it even easier if we wait a few more months. Rib-bit.)

And there are other optimizations, too, along with a nicely redesigned way of accessing the Windows Start menu without having need for the Task bar onscreen.

All in all, it sounds like a set of updates to an already solid virtualization platform. If you’re in the market for such a product, version 3 of Fusion will cost $79.99. If you’re a current paid user, an upgrade will set you back $39.99. I use both Parallels and Fusion (at work and home, respectively) and like both well enough. I’ve been using the Parallels 5 beta, and it’s pretty nice. But while I haven’t had the chance to toy with Fusion 3 yet, I’m quite intrigued, and will be getting the upgrade. If you’ve already invested in one camp or the other, I can’t say (yet) if jumping ship for the other would be a worthwhile investment. Check back later after I’ve got my hands on the updates, as I’ll try to put some perspective to this topic.

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In “Share,” the focus is squarely on the new peer to peer connectivity introduced in OS 3.0 that allows iPhones in close proximity to discover each other for multiplayer gaming and sharing. The ad features three apps that use peer to peer in different ways. Mover (free, iTunes link) allows image sharing using an innovative and well-designed interface tailored to the iPhone’s touchscreen controls. Bump (free, iTunes link) allows contact info exchange, and is the app that won Apple’s billionth app downloaded contest. Finally, EA’s Scrabble ($4.99, iTunes link) demonstrates the iPhone’s multiplayer gaming capabilities.

“Travel” provides a selection of apps handy for the globe-trotting iPhone owner. I was expecting Apple to throw in at least one that takes advantage of the new compass features in the 3GS, but they clearly wanted to stick to apps that would work on both the 3G and the 3GS. Rick Steves’ Historic Paris Walk ($4.99, iTunes link) is the first featured app, which provides a guided, narrated tour of the celebrated European capital. Next up is Paris Metro ’09 ($4.99, iTunes link), which provides a transit map for the Paris underground. Finally, Freeverse’s Postman ($1.99, iTunes link) allows you to create and send custom postcards using photos in your album or that you take with your iPhone’s camera.

Apple clearly wants to focus more on what both currently available iPhone generations can do, rather than on the distinguishing features of the new 3GS. Since they’ve already tried to set up that distinction in the past, I think it’s a good strategy to just try to market a unified iPhone brand and let consumers make their own choices.

This series of ads continues to be a great way to show off the iPhone’s flexibility to consumers who may not be aware of its capabilities, but I’m surprised we haven’t yet seen a fan-made parody featuring a list of unfairly rejected or hamstringed apps, i.e., “Want to use Google Voice to connect with friends and family? There’s no app for that.” or “Want to stream your own, fairly acquired media from your home Slingbox over 3G whose usage you pay for? There’s no app for that.”

Someone make it happen. And please, Apple, by all means, continue to use Matt Costa’s Mr. Pitiful, because even just hearing the instrumental intro to that song has it stuck in my head for days, which is definitely a good thing.

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The recent Conficker virus scare had me warning relatives to protect their PCs, while also simultaneously gloating about how lucky I am to not be affected, since I’m a Mac user. You could say it bordered on the obnoxious, and you’d be right.

But it looks like I may have to eat some humble pie now that a bug has been found in VMware Fusion that could potentially allow malicious code to be run on your Mac using a virtualized Windows machine as a conduit. Obviously, Windows is still the weak link here, but it doesn’t make your Apple machine any less vulnerable.

Luckily, the flaw was discovered by Immunity Inc. exploit researcher Kostya Kortchinsky, and not by some malicious hacker eager to steal your credit card information. The vulnerability allows the virtual machine display function to read and write code in the host operating system, including OS X. Kortchinsky demoed the flaw using a Vista machine running a guest OS of Windows XP, but said the flaw is just as easy to exploit in OS X running Fusion, though they hadn’t yet actually run live tests of such a scenario.

Not one to be caught slouching, VMware has already responded with an update to Fusion, version 2.0.4, to fix the bug and block the exploit. It’s a free update for all Fusion 2 owners.

Even if Windows is actually the conduit for the malicious code in this case, this is a good reminder that Macs are not invulnerable to attack, despite what we may sometimes think. There’s a variety of security software out there to consider, but as always, smart and safe usage is your best bet for avoiding most ills.

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The alpha will get Hulu working again, in case you haven’t already downloaded the test fixes. The reason for Boxee’s renewed ability to play Hulu video is the new XULRunner browser it uses to play video, which sidesteps Hulu’s recent limitation of playback to non-browser based devices and applications. It also enables Boxee to play pretty much any video you can find on the web by adding URLs with video RSS feeds as sources. In the new alpha release, all of these features — and the new support for Pandora, PBS and RadioTime — are present, minus the bugs and connection issues that were present in the test builds.

The big news for developers is that Boxee also released its official API late yesterday to the public, so that anyone can develop their own plug-ins for the software. Development is supposedly open to all, with Boxee claiming they won’t decide what is and what isn’t published. Users will be able to install new applications via the App Box. The API is Python-based, and comes with full documentation. You can learn more about the API at Boxee’s developer web site.

Now that Boxee is open for community development, it truly has become more or less exactly what Apple TV should’ve been. Apple should be taking notes, or at least thinking about not trying to bar access to its hardware every time it releases a firmware update.

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Running QuickBooks for Windows in a virtual machine (VM) on your Mac is often the best way to get all the advanced features of QuickBooks that are only available in the Windows version and still have fun using your Mac the way nature intended, running OS X Leopard. If you choose to go this route, here are a few tips and tricks to help you run QuickBooks smoothly inside a VM.

Clean Installs Are Always Best

I know it’s tempting to just run VMware Converter or Parallels Transporter and just suck the contents of your current PC into a VM. For many of us, we only really need to run one or two critical Windows applications and everything on our old PC is way more than we really need. In that situation, you’ll thank me later for telling you to take the time to set up a clean and lean VM that does exactly what you want it to do, without all the cruft and junk that often creeps into a Windows install. Load Windows, load your anti-virus software, and load QuickBooks.

Always Quit the App

Suspending your VM is a fantastic way to cut down the time it takes to relaunch later. Suspending a VM is a lot like putting your computer to sleep; the current state is saved and the VM is ready to pick up right where you left off. In order to do this for a VM, the contents of RAM for the guest OS are written to a file and then restored when the VM is opened again. The problem is that sometimes restoring the contents of RAM doesn’t work right. In this event, you must restart the VM and whatever you were working on (that hasn’t been saved to disk) is lost.

While I often suspend a VM when I’m done with it, I always quit my running applications so that they have a chance to write their data files to the VM disk file and close them properly. This is especially important with QuickBooks. You really don’t want a problem with restoring a suspended VM to hose your company file. You are always better off to quit QuickBooks so it can close its data file properly and then suspend the VM. If the OS cannot be restored, at least the QuickBooks file in the virtual disk is still good and you have a much better chance of rebooting your VM and finding that all is still perfectly fine with your accounting info.

If you want to access your virtual disk from the Mac side when the VM is not running, then you will probably want to shut down the VM too so you can use VMDK Mounter for VMware Fusion or Parallels Explorer to mount the virtual disk to the Mac desktop.

Use Shared Folders for Backups

Backups of QuickBooks company files are so important that the ability to create them can be automated to run every time you quit the application. I can’t stress enough how important it is to enable this feature and make a backup copy every time you use the application. Here’s my absolute favorite trick for using this feature in a VM: point the backup location to a shared folder that is visible on the Mac side. I usually recommend that you create a folder called “backup” or “quickbooks” in your Documents folder on the Mac side. Configure your virtualization software to allow the guest OS to have read/write access to this folder. Now you can tell QuickBooks to write its backup file to this shared folder every time you run the app. Don’t let Windows have read/write access to your entire Home folder though. A virus may cause Windows to randomly delete or rewrite files and you want to limit the potential damage.

Why do this? Well, now you have a backup of your company file that is accessible to the Mac side of your computer. Because the virtual disk itself appears as a huge monolithic file to the Mac, you may want to exclude it from Time Machine so that you don’t save copies of this 6-8GB file every hour. If you have a copy of your company file in your Documents folder, your Mac will take a snapshot of this file every hour and make another copy on your Time Machine drive. If you have MobileMe, you can configure the included backup application to routinely make a copy of this company file to your iDisk storage. This is a great way to take advantage of all the ways your Mac protects your files for you and apply that to your critical Windows files as well.

Best of Both Worlds

The real key here is to use the benefits of virtualization and avoid the pitfalls. These simple tips and tricks will help you enjoy running QuickBooks for Windows on your Mac and really leverage the advantages of the approach.

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QuickBooks is one of those key business applications that many people who are considering a switch to the Mac are worried about leaving behind. While QuickBooks 2009 for Mac might be the perfect answer for many, others do not want to give up some of the key features of the Windows version.

Intuit provides a list of key differences, and I think the most important ones are the industry-specific editions of QuickBooks Premier, multi-user access, and the ability to create an Accountant’s Copy of your company file. If you need any of those features, then you’ll want to continue to run the Windows version of QuickBooks.

Fortunately, there are several good methods to accomplish this feat that won’t break the bank or leave you pulling your hair out. Just remember that you are still running Windows (with one exception pointed out below). You will need to make sure that you are protected from viruses and spyware. You might be tempted to turn off networking entirely to avoid the anti-virus tax, but QuickBooks receives frequent updates over the Internet and many people use the DirectConnect features to pull down their financial statements through the intertubes as well.

Boot Camp

You can use Boot Camp, a feature of Mac OS X Leopard, to run Windows on your Mac. This solution allows you to shut down your Mac and reboot into Windows natively. You can’t use your Mac applications while Windows is running, though. In this scenario, you are running Windows on your Mac just like you would run it on a PC. Compatibility is excellent because you really are just running Windows. The downside of this approach is that you can’t take your Mac email and documents and easily copy and paste or import that information into QuickBooks. Likewise, it can be hard to get to the Windows files when you are in the Mac side unless you install MacFUSE to read the NTFS filesystem.

CrossOver Mac

CrossOver Mac is a WINE project that tricks some (but not all) Windows software into thinking that it is talking to Windows XP and passes those requests along to Mac OS X. Because of this trickery, it doesn’t work for every application. If you search the compatibility list for “QuickBooks” you’ll see that CrossOver Mac is listed as “known not to work” for the most recent versions. It could be a good choice if you are running QuickBooks Pro 2004, but not if you have already upgraded to 2007 or 2009. Since it runs in Mac OS X, you can still pull information from your email or other documents on your Mac. And since it’s not actually Windows, you don’t have to worry so much about viruses and spyware.

CrossOver Mac is $40 for the Standard version and $70 for the Pro version. A free trial is available to download, but I can’t really recommend it until it is updated to work with the latest versions of QuickBooks for Windows.

Virtualization

Virtualization provides a way to create a virtual machine (VM) where another guest OS can run inside Mac OS X. In contrast to CrossOver, you are actually running Windows inside the VM.

There are three major virtualization packages – VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, and xVM Virtual Box. The convenience of these virtualization solutions is great because you still have access to all your Mac OS X applications and features while the virtual machine is running alongside your other Mac software. You can even hide the Windows desktop and only view the QuickBooks application window itself and use Exposé and all the other cool windowing features of OS X.

While, virtualization is not a good solution for 3D design software or computer games (as these types of software want to talk directly to the hardware rather than a virtual machine), it works great for QuickBooks and is the solution that I recommend to most users. Because you are essentially running two complete OS installs on one machine, it’s best to have at least 2GB of RAM.

One potential benefit of VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop is that they both provide Windows software to convert the entire hard drive of your existing PC into a virtual machine file that you can use on your Mac. This is great if you have a nice, lean Windows install with only the files that you need to bring with you to the Mac. It’s not so great if your PC is having problems and Windows is not running well. You’ll bring all those problems with you when you create a new VM file. If QuickBooks is the only Windows software that you need to run, I would recommend a clean install of Windows, Anti-virus software, and QuickBooks in a brand new VM.

VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop are both $80 and free trials are available to download. xVM Virtual Box is a free solution supported by Sun Microsystems. Be sure to read TheAppleBlog’s take on VMware vs Parallels and our review of Virtual Box.

Remote Desktop Client

Another solution is to continue to run QuickBooks on a PC, but access it over the network from your Mac. Remote Desktop Client from Microsoft provides a simple way to remotely control a PC running Windows XP Pro or Vista Business or Ultimate and it works just like screen sharing in Mac OS X Leopard. The killer feature is local printing so you can make hard copies of QuickBooks reports using a printer that is connected to your Mac. This can be a great solution if you already have a PC running QuickBooks on a required version of Windows and you don’t want to spend any more money on virtualization software. You can still access your Mac applications and documents and transfer information back and forth between the remote PC and the Mac you are sitting at while you work. The downside is that it’s difficult to set up to use over the Internet if you travel away from the PC with a portable Mac. Remote Desktop Client is a free download.

Specific Scenarios

I need to run the multi-user version of QuickBooks.

OK. You definitely need QuickBooks for Windows. What I recommend here is buying a cheap PC and installing QuickBooks for Windows with the “Install Database Server Only” option. This PC will then host your multi-user company file(s) which you can access over your office network from other computers running QuickBooks for Windows. Now you just need to make sure that you put your backup plan in place for the company file(s) hosted on that PC. For licensing, the host computer does not count as a user if it is running in “Database Server Only” mode. Of course, if you already have a desktop PC that is running QuickBooks, you can make that the host by configuring multi-user mode. Just make sure that you leave it turned on with QuickBooks running.

As an alternative, if you already have Windows Small Business Server 2008 in your office, you could set up a second machine as a Terminal Services host and use RDC to open sessions on that machine. That way you don’t even need to install QuickBooks on each computer, just on the terminal services host machine.

I want to backup my QuickBooks data to Time Machine (or MobileMe).

One of the amazing features of Leopard is Time Machine. If you want Time Machine to grab a copy of your QuickBooks for Windows data, then I recommend you use virtualization and then configure QuickBooks to save a backup copy of your company file to a shared folder on the Mac side so it gets picked up by Time Machine. Incidentally, this also works if you are using Backup.app to make offsite copies of critical files in the cloud.

I already have Boot Camp setup and don’t want to spend more money.

Alright, alright. I won’t force you to switch to virtualization, but this is probably the only situation where I would use Boot Camp. You would have a lot more benefits with virtualization (flexibility, convenience, snapshots, accessibility of files in either environment, etc.), but I will let you keep the Boot Camp setup you have already made.

Recommendations

If you need or want to run the Windows version of QuickBooks from your Mac, each of these four methods will help you accomplish that goal. CrossOver is hard to recommend because it will not support the latest versions of QuickBooks. Remote Desktop Client works great if your PC is working fine and is sitting in the same office as your Mac. BootCamp is simple and straightforward and included with Leopard. One important consideration is that Intuit is more likely to support a BootCamp or Remote Desktop solution because you are running Windows natively, either on your Mac with BootCamp or on a PC using Remote Desktop.

Virtualization is by far the most convenient way to take advantage of the best of both worlds. However, support can be hard to come by because you are running an Intuit product in a Microsoft OS inside a 3rd party virtual machine on an Apple computer. That’s four companies that might all try to pass the buck when you have a problem or failure. That said, I’ve found virtualization to be stable, relatively fast, and easy to manage. I love that I can hide the Windows desktop and just look at the application that I need. When I don’t need that application, I can quit the VM and continue to enjoy all the merits of Mac OS X.

Frankly, isn’t running OS X why you bought a Mac in the first place? Now you can still get all your work done and play with the shiny new toys from that store with the ginormous glowing fruit sign. Ahhh, such sweet joy to have your cake and eat it too. Or at least your Mac and QuickBooks for Windows.

Since I recommend virtualization for most users, I have some tips and tricks for you to use that I will share with you. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another helping of advice on how to run QuickBooks for Windows effectively.

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A couple of days ago I installed Windows 7 beta (32-bit, Ultimate version) on my 13″ unibody MacBook, and I thought I’d recount my installation experience in case some of you are curious how the other half (OK, the other 95 percent) live.

Alas, this exercise afforded little opportunity to dazzle anyone with my technical acumen. I have no stories of incompatible hardware (even my five-year old HP printer is fine), no BSODs, no failed installations. Heck, I can’t even brag about hitting up Microsoft’s knowledge base and then going to the four corners of the Internet to download various drivers to make it all work. 

Make no mistake, I was still in the Windows world, and got a reminder of that pretty quickly, which I’ll explain shortly, but the bottom line is this was about as uneventful an installation of Windows as you could ask for. 
 Here’s how I installed: 

• Hit the MS web site and download the beta. It comes in the form of an ISO image file. As an aside, MS warns you that it may take “many hours” to download the file — it’s 2.44 GB. Ha! They laughed at me when I ponied up extra dollars each month for Cox Cable’s special premium high-speed connection. The fools! Who’s laughing now? Thirty-seven minutes for the download.
• In VMware 2.01 create a new virtual machine. My existing VM is Windows XP, which Windows 7 will not upgrade, but I didn’t want this beta software on the existing machine anyway. Hey, it’s beta folks, the beauty of VM is you can have a new “PC” whenever you want it. For the new machine I chose Windows 2008 Server as the “base.” I used the ISO file as the installation media. 

• I did not choose the Easy Install option. I suspected a scripted easy installation might not work until VMware has a bona-fide Windows 7 option. Since I was using Windows 2008 Server as a surrogate, I figured I’d just handle the install prompts myself. 

• Replied to the usual prompts, and the installation took off. It was done in under 40 minutes. 
• Installed the VMware Tools. 

That’s really it. After this was done I changed the desktop to 1280 x 800 and ran it full screen. Internet, sound, trackpad, graphics, all just worked. I didn’t even have to configure my printer, it was just there as my default. Smooth.

For those who didn’t know, Microsoft has unbundled the basic mail, chat, photo, etc. software from Windows 7. Therefore the installation is pretty spartan. So the first thing you should do is download the Windows Live Essential apps to fill that gap. I’ve been running these in beta on XP for quite a while, and they were taken out of beta status just a couple weeks ago. 

It was at this point I hit my first snag. I used VMware to share my Mac’s Pictures folder, and then pointed Windows Live Photo Gallery to that share. It created a couple picture thumbnails, and then froze. I could force quit the app, but every time I opend it it would try to process the share, and freeze. 

So I removed the share, thinking the app would balk at it being missing and I could just get rid of the reference. Nope, it still tried to handle the share and would freeze. Bummer. 

OK, I uninstall the app and re-install it. Sadly, it remembered the share and still froze. 

So I dug into the Registry to see if I could find where the string for this share was stored within the photo app so I could delete it manually. It was at this point I really remembered I was in WIndows. Put simply, the registry blows. Anyway, my searches turned up negative so I needed to take another tack. 

I re-established the share and decided to try using the brief delay between the app opening and when it tries to process the share to delete it via the app’s interface. I couldn’t quite right-click the share and hit Delete fast enough on the first two tries, but on the third I got it. Now all is well. 

While the registry serves as a Windows reminder, I don’t really blame anyone for this issue. Is it the VMware share? Is it Win 7? Is it the photo app? It doesn’t matter much since right now VMware does not claim support for Win 7, and I’m sure it’s not yet a tested config for Microsoft either. For what it’s worth, I’m using another VM share for a folder between the Mac and the VM machine in Windows Explorer with no problems, so it may be the photo app. 

The only other glitch I had was that after a few hours that first evening, I lost sound. I tried rebooting and a couple other things, but it was getting late and I resolved to tackle it the next day. However, the next day (yesterday) it was working again, and has been since. 

So what’s it been like in use? My short time so far with Win 7 has been positive. I do not have the Aero “see-through” windows or previews (the VM graphics do not support them), but even lacking those the interface is decent. Hovering over an app in the dock taskbar pops up the names of the windows (or tabs in IE), and overall response seems to be close to my XP SP3 VM. 

As I get more familiar with Win 7 in comparison with Mac OS X and Win XP I’ll likely post more bits and pieces of my experiences. For now, however, I’m off to a good start.

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This release also includes support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems and experimental 3D acceleration. Networking performance has been boosted and there have been many smaller bug-fixes and enhancements.

VirtualBox has support for a wide range of guest operating systems and there is an extensive number of live, pre-built images (VDIs) that are ready to run.

If you only have occasional need to run Windows, Linux or alternative operating systems but do not want to pay for a full VMware or Parallels license, VirtualBox is a great alternative.

Be sure to check out their Mac-specific forums if you run into any quirks or difficulties. I’ve found the community to be very helpful and responsive and run a few flavors of Linux in VDIs primarily to be able to take them anywhere (VirtualBox is cross-platform). While it does not have as extensive of an integration between the guest and host systems and there is no support for OS X virtualization yet, VirtualBox is a solid product with a promising future.

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