Readyboost works on Mac Virtual Vista

As we had earlier post that Parallels is not supporting Readyboost on its Windows Vista installation due to USB speed issues. As Boot Camp allows to take advantage of the Readyboost feature as it is a native install, if one is OK with the dual boot that is a better option as the Vista performance experience index scrore using boot camp is 4.6.

But today I thought of experiementing with Vmware fusion to see how it performs when compared to Parallels. But to my surprise, the latest version 1.0b3 (build 43733) is real kool and works by booting to Boot Camp partition ( Parallels does not yet support this for Vista) and takes advantage of Readyboost as well.

Here is the steps what I did in my Intel compatible Macbook Pro:

Install Windows Vista using regular boot camp Install all boot camp drivers and update using Windows update Insert readyboost compatible flash drive and after the test, assign the default size (mine 1.6G out of 2GB) Now reboot to Mac, download and install VMware fusion beta, which is freeely available from VMware. Once its installed, start the VMware fusion and point to pick the Boot Camp partition Configure the VMware (VMware tool bar on top -> Virtual Machine -> Settings) to have right memory (I gave 1.2G to VM and 1 Processor, and rest to default) Disable the debug logs (VMware tool bar on top -> VMware Fusion -> Preferences -> Uncheck Diagnostics) And start the OS, it just starts without any problem Don’t be panic as the OS operates slower than Parallels and it takes time to take mouse clicks and keyboard input. Windows might report missing drivers and etc; do not worry. Now, install VMware tools when the OS is running (VMware tool bar on top -> Virtual Machine -> Install VMware tools ) and once the disk is mounted run setup.exe and install all drivers. After the VMware tools are installed completely; reboot your system. After the reboot, run Windows update to have latest drivers if there are any missing and reboot if asked. Once the system rebooted back, insert your ready boost flash drive and the VMware automatically uses this as readyboost as its already configured on that OS when its in Boot Camp. To confirm whether readyboost works or not, you can open the drive contents and you can see the details like in the right side pictures Now, you can even test ReadyBoost how it works by doing this: Click on the Start button -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Reliability and Performance Monitor In the left menu click on the Performance Monitor under the Monitoring Tools category In the right pane, click on the green + sign () to add new counters. Under available counters, scroll down till you see ReadyBoost Cache and double-click on it to expand this category. Select the ReadyBoost Cache counter that you would like to add by left-clicking on it and then clicking on the Add button. Once you have added all the ReadyBoost Cache counters that you would like to monitor, press the OK button. Now you can see graph with all counters as in the picture below. Open IE browser or any other application to see how it spikes by doing multiple times

Thats all, now I have Windows Vista which can either boot using Boot Camp as natively or through Vmware Fusion and Readyboost works in both ways except that Aero theme will be missing when ran with VM and thats a well known issue in the world of virtualization.

Here is the few missing features when compared to Paralles:

• Coherence is absolutely a needed and lovable feature by everyone in Parallels, which is totally missing in VMWare
• Changing from Full-Screen to regular and regular to full-screen takes some time in VMWare; where is Parallels it is instant and animation is too cool.
• The performance in Vmware is not that optimal compared to Parallels even after installing VMware tools and disabling the debug logs. May be future releases will address this. But not really bad as it works perfect for general development use.
• Overall its good time for us and we have to wait and see who wins in the race..either VMware or Parallels …am neutral at this time.