Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

VMware launches Fusion 5

appleinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#21

Post by andyjohnson0 »

eli wrote: post #13
batista wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? The changing digits at the end of the names you mention (Fusion 3, 4, 5) make it sound like those are _different_ versions of the product. Did any of them came advertising "free upgrades for life"? If not, I don't see the point of this rant. The worked hard, i…

Nobody is forced to buy, in fact the old version should still work fine. No, it doesn't. That's the problem. Fusion 3 is buggy on Lion and doesn't run at all on Mountain Lion [1]. Though there is some truth to your point. I'm guessing it is a non-trivial amount of work to support new OS releases. Perhaps it's even more work than the new features being added. Surely they shouldn't be obligated to support old releases…

Its the same with VMware Workstation on Windows. Every time a new version of Windows is released it seems to require a new version of workstation to run it as a guest.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#22

Post by nilsbunger »

batista wrote: post #9
nilsbunger wrote: post #5

I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? My single Fusion license has cost me $150 over the last 3 years! Thanks a lot VMware!

> I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? The changing digits at the end of the names you mention (Fusion 3, 4, 5) make it sound like those are _different_ versions of the product. Did any of them came advertising "free upgrades for life"? If not, I don't see the point of this rant. The worked hard, i…

I hear what you're saying, and I'm usually on your side of these debates.

But it's hard to use the existing version:

* they stop doing updates (bug fixes, security fixes, etc) on the existing version when they release a new one. And being a complex product, there are a lot of bugs to fix :)

* the existing versions don't work well with new OS X releases - Fusion reaches pretty deep into the OS, as I'm sure you know. I had to upgrade to Fusion 4 to make Lion work. Not sure yet about 4 on M.L.

The problem is Fusion is not really a mature product. It's a hard piece of SW to write, so the lack of maturity isn't really a problem by itself. It's just that they've effectively put me on a $50/yr SaaS plan without me realizing it.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#23

Post by mgkimsal »

just bought 4 last month (used virtualbox for a lot of stuff, but had some proprietary vmware machines that were a real pain to try to run in vbox). $49 for purchase of vmware fusion 4. Fine. But now... I can upgrade to fusion 5 for $49... or just buy fusion 5 for... $49. Annoying. Yes, it's all in my head, but an upgrade price the same as a 'regular' price leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#24

Post by nilsbunger »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #21
eli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forced to buy, in fact the old version should still work fine. No, it doesn't. That's the problem. Fusion 3 is buggy on Lion and doesn't run at all on Mountain Lion [1]. Though there is some truth to your point. I'm guessing it is a non-trivial amount of work to support new OS releases. Perhaps it's even more work than the new features being added. Surely they shouldn't be obligated to support old releases…

Its the same with VMware Workstation on Windows. Every time a new version of Windows is released it seems to require a new version of workstation to run it as a guest.

That is annoying. But the problem is worse on Mac OS, b/c OS X release cycle is only 12 months now.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#25

Post by batista »

eli wrote: post #13
batista wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? The changing digits at the end of the names you mention (Fusion 3, 4, 5) make it sound like those are _different_ versions of the product. Did any of them came advertising "free upgrades for life"? If not, I don't see the point of this rant. The worked hard, i…

Nobody is forced to buy, in fact the old version should still work fine. No, it doesn't. That's the problem. Fusion 3 is buggy on Lion and doesn't run at all on Mountain Lion [1]. Though there is some truth to your point. I'm guessing it is a non-trivial amount of work to support new OS releases. Perhaps it's even more work than the new features being added. Surely they shouldn't be obligated to support old releases…

FWIW, I'm on the same boat: I bought 3, then 4, and now have to update to 5. They do have some discount (free upgrade actually) to those that bought it after some date however.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#26

Post by epo »

nilsbunger wrote: post #5

I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? My single Fusion license has cost me $150 over the last 3 years! Thanks a lot VMware!

Parallels pull pretty much the same trick and will on Sep 4th when Parallels 8 comes out. For me P7 works for Linux and Mountain Lion, doubt I will upgrade.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#27

Post by xutopia »

nilsbunger wrote: post #5

I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? My single Fusion license has cost me $150 over the last 3 years! Thanks a lot VMware!

I don't understand why more people don't use Virtualbox. It's free and pretty much equivalent.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#28

Post by krobertson »

nilsbunger wrote: post #5

I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? My single Fusion license has cost me $150 over the last 3 years! Thanks a lot VMware!

I just bought Fusion 4 two months ago. Was using Fusion 3 for a long time just fine... got a new retina mac and had a few issues with it, so got 4 and it mostly fixed them and I was content.

Now 5 comes out, seemingly has better retina support, and I'd have to shell out $50 again. No thanks.

Each Fusion release is less and less compelling for the most part. Fusion 4 was "built for Lion", yet I used Fusion 3 on Lion exclusively until June just fine.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#29

Post by carlesfe »

s_henry_paulson wrote: post #18
nilsbunger wrote: post #5

I'm a bit annoyed, I just paid $50 to upgrade to the Lion version last year, plus $50 for Fusion 3 upgrade the year before that, and now I have to pay again? My single Fusion license has cost me $150 over the last 3 years! Thanks a lot VMware!

If you're hung up on the money, VirtualBox should do what you need, it has a seamless mode, and it's free.

Talking from experience, VirtualBox doesn't play well with Steam games (or games in general).

For me, Terraria was buggy and the graphics had some glitches. Half-Life had mouse issues, etc.

I used to buy Parallels but they use the same update tactics than VMWare, so now I just don't use Windows games at all.

Re: VMware launches Fusion 5

#30

Post by myhf »

fredleblanc wrote: post #14

Have they added the ability to prevent that darn menu helper thing from loading in the menu bar? That's all I really want in an upgrade.

I've managed to turn off all the menu bar additions in version 3, 4, and 5. But I don't think the settings to do so were in the same place every time.
Post reply on HN