This blog post references my cover story 'Virtualization: Silicon And Software Salvation Or Technological Tower Of Babel?' in EDN's October 3, 2008 edition. It's one of a series of web addendums to the print writeup.

One topic I didn't mention in my mini-review of the Apple MacBook Air two weeks ago (since the writeup was already long as-is) is my impressions of OS 10.5. Two particular things I really like about 'Leopard' versus OS 10.4 ('Tiger', which I was running on the MacBook), not to mention OS 10.3 ('Panther', which I'm still running on the G4 and G5 Power Macs):

• The Finder doesn't freak out when I put the system to sleep while I'm connected to a NAS over SMB, and
• The Time Machine auto-backup facility (for which long-time readers will readily understand my enthusiasm) is really slick.

On that latter point, I was happily able to easily USB-tether a Western Digital 250 GByte external HDD to my new Airport Extreme 802.11n router. Once I 'mated' the drive to my MacBook Air via Time Machine's Preferences, the system promptly did a full backup, followed by periodic reconnects, incremental backups and auto-disconnects every hour that the system is awake.

Speaking of backups, the one thing I make a point of watching out for is that a Time Machine session isn't in progress when I put the MacBook Air to sleep...although cyber-debate is inconclusive as to whether Time Machine can reliably recover from a prematurely terminated incremental backup. If you feel that hourly incremental backups are excessive, for some reason (I barely notice they're in progress, from a system load standpoint), applications such as TimeMachineEditor and TimeMachineScheduler promise to enable you to alter the repetition rate.

Speaking of Fusion, the transition from the MacBook to the MacBook Air while I was at WinHEC provided an opportunity to test system-to-system VM migration for the first time (who oh why do I keep tackling potentially catastrophic computer-related tasks while I'm hundreds to thousands of miles away from the home office?). After installing Fusion v2 on the MacBook Air, I copied the voluminous virtual machine package file from the MacBook to MacBook Air via a USB HDD intermediary, and then opened it up in the new system for the first time (note, the MacBook and MacBook Air were networked together and sharing a WAN connection via a travel router running in my hotel room).

Fusion asked me if I'd moved or copied the virtual machine, and as an experiment I chose the latter option, even though due to Windows XP's licensing restrictions I realized I couldn't long-term run two VMs installed from the same CD and license key. Windows XP subsequently prompted me to re-activate, which a phone call to Microsoft technical support solved in short order. Copying a VM (versus moving it) supposedly defines unique virtual MAC addresses and UUIDs for the new VM iteration, and I subsequently ran NewSID to update the NetBIOS name and SID.

I needed to re-enter my POP3, IMAP and SMTP server passwords in the new VM's copy of Outlook 2000 the first time I used each server to send or receive email. And alas, the old VM running on the MacBook is no longer able to see any of the other resources on my Windows workgroup, though other LAN clients are still able to see it. Again, this isn't a problem per se, due to Windows' single-installation licensing requirements, but it is baffling.

One week later, VMware updated Fusion to v2.01, and I tackled the upgrade a few days later. It fixed one obscure bug I'd noticed; it "No longer disables certain shared folders and mirrored folders that were nested folders. The potential data loss issue with nested shared folders has been resolved." Unfortunately, it also introduced several bugs I hadn't seen before; for one thing, the virtualized mouse's cursor in Full Screen viewing mode sometimes got scrambled to a state where it mimicked either the OS X cursor or a 'white glove' cursor (and the only recovery was to suspend or shut down the virtual machine, exit Fusion, then re-launch it).

Also, right-clicking a USB-tethered mouse in virtualized Word 2000 didn't produce the usual menu result, but instead selected a block of text. Oddly enough, other applications still seemed to work fine with an external mouse, as did the MacBook Air's built-in trackpad with Word 2000. The scrambled cursor issue didn't manifest when I ran Fusion windowed, but I couldn't figure out a workaround for the Word 2000 right-click problem...until on a hunch I disabled USB Overdrive in OS X yesterday afternoon and both mouse problems promptly disappeared. Eureka!

Speaking of mice reminds me to say something about the keyboard. As you may recall from past posts, I've historically used the number pad Enter key to the right of the MacBook's space bar as the forward-delete key in Windows, initially via the AutoHotKey utility and later directly within Fusion once v2 of the program added keyboard redefinition capabilities. Alas, the MacBook Air no longer includes the number pad Enter key, replacing it with a redundant option key.

For now, since Fusion can't differentiate between the right and left option keys, I need to use the fn-delete keystroke combination to emulate forward-delete functionality. VMware is aware of the issue, and I suspect a fix is enroute since the MacBook Air's revised keyboard layout has now spread throughout Apple's product line. Speaking of keyboards, I've now got the palmrest protector from Marware's Protection Pack Deluxe installed and I'm really pleased with it.

Finally, speaking of Fusion reminds me to say something about VMware's key competitor in the virtualization-on-OS X world, Parallels. I've run Parallels Desktop (formerly Parallels Workstation) on and off over the past several years, both with virtual machine images and in conjunction with a Boot Camp partition-based Window installation. Although initial versions of the program offered limited virtualization capabilities, what features were supported seemed to be quite robust. However, as the program's capabilities expanded, so too did its instability (at least in my experience), especially with the infamous (and frequent) v3 iterations.

After a lengthy gestation period, Parallels released v4 of Desktop for Mac three weeks ago, with added and revised features that the product's Wikipedia entry does a nice job of summarizing. Alas, initial feedback is troubling, although since happy users tend not to speak up, it's difficult to ascertain just what percentage of Parallels' customers are having problems. And unfortunately, the pledged IEEE 1394 'FireWire' virtualization support in Desktop v4 has not (yet) appeared, nor has the virtualized SCSI support initially scheduled for v3 of the program. To be fair, Fusion doesn't include these features, either, but at least VMware never promised support for them.