VMWare Fusion Small Complaint
Rob Fahrni’s post wherein he lists one small complaint about Fusion reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about my own, small, complaint.
As much as I love Fusion, and I love being able to flip back and forth between OSX and Windows on my Macbook, I have discovered one area where, on a laptop especially, VMWare Fusion has a bit of a hiccup.
It’s in the area of moving between networks.
Typically, I can go from home, to a coffee shop, and leave the Macbook in stand-by mode with the programs that I’m going to be using open. (Especially useful when meeting someone for lunch to share some information.) Upon being roused, Airport will find the new network and connect, and I can continue right where I left off.
However, if I’m using Windows to show off some stuff that has links in it, the bridged networking in the VM doesn’t pick up any change in the network. It bridges the network connection with the host machine when it starts, and seemingly, not again. In order to get it Internet access, I have to disable and enable the network adapter and I’ve found in some cases, even that doesn’t get me connected, I have to shut down the VM and start over after connecting to the new network in OS X.
Like I said, it’s a small complaint, simply because it’s not something I’d run into very often, but it is annoying. Since network-switching on the fly works on a Windows laptop pretty well, most of the time, and it works on OSX, I can only assume the catch here is bridging the new connection to the VM is problematic. It’d be nice if it wasn’t.
