Using Windows 7 Beta on a Mac with VMware Fusion

Based on the continued sales and popularity of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, it looks like Mac users have, for one reason or another, the need to run Microsoft Windows now and then. The problem is that Windows Vista runs very slowly as a Guest OS in a hypervisor (unless you have a really fast Mac and can give it 2GB RAM). So, those of us running Windows on a Mac usually run Windows XP instead. The problem with this that XP is now over 8 years old. Microsoft has extended its general support status at least twice now because of customer demand and the rising popularity of low-cost netbooks (which also have performance problems with Windows Vista). But, the fact is that it will probably feel very unconfortable to be running Windows XP in 2011 when it turns 10 years old. People who need to use some critical Windows-only application on a Mac (an accounting system for example) would probably be better served by having a more current version of Windows to use as a Guest OS. And, Windows Vista is not it.

The word is that Windows 7 will be less of a resource hog than Windows Vista. And, its beta release became available last week. So, it seemed like a good idea to see if this claim/rumor is true. As a long-time beta tester, I was able to get a download before the masses crashed Microsoft's download servers last week when they headed over to the site for the...

Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview Program

The first thing I did was to install Windows 7 Beta as a Guest OS using the freeware VirtualBox. However, VirtualBox has two big problems related to Windows 7 Beta.

1. Its Guest Additions does not work with Windows 7 Beta. This means that I had to press a special key to get out of the window containing Windows 7 to get back to OS X.
2. Its shared folders feature did not work with Windows 7 Beta.

So, I decided to use VMWare Fusion 2.0.1 instead. The installation went very smoothly. VMware's additions to help make Windows more useable worked unlike VirtualBox. And, its shared folders features also worked. This meant I could read and write files stored in the OS X disk area from within Windows 7 Beta.

My secondary reason for running Windows 7 Beta in a virtual machine was to see if it could run with as little as 512MB RAM. The reason why this interests me is because I want to run Windows 7 on a netbook which generally come configured with 512MB or 1GB RAM. I'm happy to say that Windows 7 Beta runs comfortably in 512MB RAM. It runs as well or better than Windows XP with the same VMware Fusion resources allocated.

I'll guess that most of you will get the little joke on the initial Windows 7 Beta screen. But, just in case. That's a Siamese Fighting Fish also known as "Betta splendens". Get it? Well, it amused me when I saw it on the screen :-)

I installed a couple of "must have" software products right away after running Windows Update. This included Avast! Anti-Virus Free Edition (free for personal use), Mozilla Firefox, Adobe AIR (for Tweetdeck and Twhirl). I read elsewhere that Google Chrome does not work with the beta. So, I skipped that one. However, I ran into a little problem with McAfee SiteAdvisor.

McAfee SiteAdvisor is a free add-on for Firefox that warns you about websites that may be dangerous by noting safe, suspect, and dangerous sites in Google search results lists. The SiteAdvisor version for Firefox on a Mac is a simple XPI (Cross Platform Install pronounced "zippy"). The version for Microsoft Windows, however, appears to be a binary executable (EXE) file. For some reason, McAfee's platform detector sees the 32-bit Windows 7 Beta installed in Fusion as the 64-bit version and gives you that version to download. It, of course, does not work with the 32-bit Windows 7 Beta I'm running. The workaround is to download the file from a PC running a 32-bit version of Windows. It would be nice, however, if McAfee simply let the end-user choose an alternate download.

If you have some critical software that only runs under Windows, you should download a copy of Windows 7 Beta (free) now to test with it for future planning. Although I'm going to stay with VMware Fusion for my Mac-based Windows 7 Beta testing, you can use the free VirtualBox for your testing to save a few dollars. Note, though, that a lot of convience is lost by using VirtualBox.