Likelihood to Recommend Nvidia GRID is the only real ready-made hardware solution available for streaming game services, 3D graphics acceleration in Virtual Desktop Infrastructures, and 3D enhanced streaming apps. Grid is also great for processing large quantities of small data-sets, such as financial, trading, science, astronomy, and much more. Grid is also well known for digital currency mining, such as Bitcoin.
Read full review Due to its perpetual licensing model, VMware Fusion is a great option for users whose needs do not change as much over time. It is also great for occasional-use scenarios such as testing and preparing code to run on newer platforms. Fusion is not really recommended for running graphics-intense applications as graphics acceleration in Fusion is fairly limited in both performance and API support. It has, however, come a very long way and offers near-native performance for many tasks.
Read full review Pros Streaming Game Services. Dedicated graphics processing form virtual desktop infrastructures, allowing the use of Photoshop, CAD, Video Editing, and more. Enhanced computing & processing of data thay consists of large amounts of smaller data sets. Financial based calculations. Read full review Allows users to run Windows only applications on their Mac without switching devices. Fusion is excellent for Windows image creation, and works exceptionally well on the Mac environment. Assists a Mac user to virtualize Windows apps. Excellent for installing Linux distros for penetration testing. Read full review Cons The cost for Nvidia GRID capable hardware is still very high, but is & has been dropping fairly rapidly. Latency is a large problem for "interaction" based systems (Gaming, remote desktop use) and requires high-speed data, and hosting close to the client. No real solutions for smaller businesses, but cloud hosting providers like SoftLayer are beginning to offer affordable hosted grid-capable environments. Read full review With OSX - 10.14.1 and the latest version of Fusion - 11.0.2 the user interface has taken a step back IMHO. I would like to see price decrease. Better remote host connection capabilities - remote server connections are available but connections are spotty. Read full review Likelihood to Renew For Apple workstations VMware Fusion is the virtualization software to use. No other application (free or paid) can do what Fusion can. The features and constant updates make Fusion an application that cant be beat.
Read full review Usability Sometimes the best surprise is no surprise and Fusion is just that. It's reliable and generally just works as expected every time (the only exception was running a boot camp install directly but that use-case scenario opens a can of worms due to how product activation works) The interface and settings are clean and simple and there is no hide and seek games to play.
Read full review Support Rating I have never contacted VMware, but there is a lot of support online on message boards, forums, StackOverflow, YouTube tutorial videos, and the like. VMware has been around nine years longer than its leading competitor, VirtualBox, although both seem to have a good presence of online user communities who can help solve issues that come up.
Read full review Implementation Rating This is a workstation application and no install insights are needed.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Nvidia invented the graphics processor, and continues to provide high quality products, even in a new industry
Read full review I've heard of other/competitive software but frankly once I tried VMware, I never looked back. There is absolutely nothing that I need that this product does not deliver. It's fast, effective and seems to be extremely durable and reliable. My only concern (and minor) might have to do with memory resources, but frankly it has not been an issue yet.
Read full review Return on Investment Allows us to simplify all of our VDI designs, as power users can be managed like all other cloud users, instead of requiring individual systems. Provides a way of offering a substantial processing increase for computing/calculations over and above what additional CPUs could offers. Offers the only "ready-made" solution for on-demand gaming services, after Sony purchased OnLive, and provides an affordable method for startups to enter the Industry. Read full review Users using a VM often don't need something as "fancy" as VMware Fusion, and instead can use a free option like Virtual Box, so we waste money on using an extra amount of VMware Fusion licenses. Developers using and IT admins using VMware Fusion for testing saves us time and money. Simply, we know mistakes would take time and money to fix, but VMware is powerful, allows for proper and fast testing. Read full review ScreenShots