This will be the post I wish I could have found when I began using Fusion

• Get as much RAM as possible. You should have at least 1GB of RAM assigned to your VM and possibly more depending on how many programs you’re running.
• Even if you have a dual-core machine, don’t use the dual-virtual-cpu option.
• If you have the option, use a 64-bit operating system (XP 64-bit, Vista 64-bit, Windows 7 64-bit). For 64-bit VM’s Fusion will use Intel’s VT hardware extensions for virtualization which perform better for call-heavy workloads. See this post.
• Virtual SCSI drives perform better than virtual IDE drives. Note that XP discs do not come with SCSI support so you should use the “Easy Install” option in VMware which will slipstream them.
• Running a file-based Virtual Machine is much faster than a boot-camp partition. The reason seems to be that accessing to data on the NTFS boot-camp partition is slower than the HFS+ partition.
• Windows XP is faster than Vista.
• Windows 7 is faster than Vista.
• If you have the option, put your VM on an external or secondary disk. The more you can minimize access to your system disk the better.
• Some forums claim that static pre-allocated disks are faster than dynamically disks that grow as needed.. This doesn’t make much sense, other than when your dynamic disk must be resized every 2GB or so.

For reference; With VMware Fusion 2 on my 2.4GHz MacBook with 4GB RAM and running Windows 7 with no programs, Activity Monitor shows around 5-6% of CPU time being used.

For my new MacBook I’d planned to pick up a member of the notebook Microsoft Mouse family similar to the Wireless Optical Mouse 4000 which I use for Media Center tasks from the couch.

Then I realized that Bluetooth MacBook = Bluetooth Mouse = No USB Dongles! 

Looking around I found the Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. It’s basically the classic Microsoft Notebook mouse but using Bluetooth instead of IR. It’s a little more costly (though not as costly as losing the dongle for a traditional wireless mouse) but at least comes with a nice little soft case that will prevent it from scratching my MacBook while in a bag.

Using the mouse the only difference I’ve noticed is that it takes a little bit longer to be detected when first switched on, a result of the Bluetooth negotiation. The drivers have the same System Preferences panel that allow you to bind the button to different roles (hint – change ‘Zoom’ to ‘Forward’) and same sensitivity options.

All in all a very nice little mouse.

So I have the new MacBook and after a week or so I’ve got to say love it.

It’s easily the best machine I’ve ever had and the specs are better than my old desktop system that’s now been consigned to the bin (or at least eBay).

For quite a while I was torn about whether to get the 2.4Ghz MacBook or the MacBook Pro. The cheapest Pro is about $400 more and with the base model you’re basically paying for a bigger and slightly better quality screen (1440×900 as opposed to 1280×800). In the end I figured that at home it’d mostly be plugged into an external display, and for portability the MacBook is a better choice (smaller, lighter, and marginally better battery life). This was definitely the right decision, the Pro is nice but I’m very happy with the more compact MacBook.

That said, as this is going to be my main machine I did bump the base-specs up to Ninja-level and added 4GB of RAM and replaced the hard-drive with a 320GB 7200 RPM model. For me the performance of SSD drives isn’t there quite yet, some of the latest drives are close but not at a price-point I’d consider.

The biggest-pain I’ve had so far is getting Bootcamp installed and working. If you have want two partitions for OSX & Windows setup it’s pretty easy to get working, but if you want a third partition to share data between them it gets tricky. With a lot of faffing around I eventually managed to get it working quite nicely. I had to spring for the Paragon NTFS driver though since I chose NTFS for the data drive (FAT32 is an awful choice for large drivers, and HFS+ support outside of OSX is pretty dire).

What’s really nice is that I can either boot directly into the Windows partition, or run it under OSX using VMware Fusion. I’ve used Virtual Machines for quite a while but being able to dual-use one like this is nifty.

Examples?

• The 802.11n firmware update that cost $3 for “accounting reasons”.
• The intentionally crippled calendar app on the original iPod Touch.
• The iPod Touch firmware updates. (Yes, $20 for five apps that took more time and effort to disable than to leave alone – “accounting reasons” again).
• The removal of boxed add-ins with later product revisions to increase margins – E.g. Apple Remote, The lack of a dock in the new iPhone, or how the iPod now comes with little more than a cable and a sticker.

One particularly close to home example is the new MacBooks. These are the first MacBooks with custom display ports that don’t come with an adapter – so after spending $2000 on a laptop you have to pay another $30 for a part that costs $2 to manufacture. Joy!

But I digress

After running Bootcamp setup and installing Vista 64-bit I pop in my OSX DVD to install the drivers for Vista 64-bit, only to see a message stating "Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer".

Wha!?

I know you can install Vista 64-bit on a new MacBook Pro. I know that aside from an extra graphics card, the MacBook and MacBook Pro hardware is the same. So surely the MacBook supports Vista 64-bit!?

No. Pro models only – http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1846

At this point my bullshit detector is starting to sound. Looking at the contents of the DVD I find a number of self-installing drivers, and the BootCamp installer package that’s run by the setup program. Hmmm.. I wonder…

In the Start Menu Type “cmd”, then right-click on the program that appears and choose “Run As Administrator”.

Then enter;

D:
cd "Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple"
msiexec /i BootCamp64.msi

And hey-presto! After by-passing the Apple crippleware program all of the drivers and Bootcamp software install and run perfectly. Or at least as perfectly as bootcamp seems to work with the new touchpad – more on this another time.

Frankly this type of behavior is extremely disappointing. If a company such as Dell pulled this there’d be gangs of media howling for their blood. As usual though the “Apple smallprint” barely gets any attention.