VMware Upgrade Policy Disappoints

October 28, 2009 by Chris · 3 Comments 

I’m miffed. Darned close to full snit, actually.

A month and a half ago I bought VMware Workstation 6.5. The sale was just too good to pass up and I had a 30 day trial winding down. The timing was perfect and I was glad to make the purchase.

Shortly after that I ran into a bug. Seems that some combinations of 64-bit windows (Vista and Win7) and video cards break VMware’s Unity mode. I was fine with 32-bit Windows 7, but I reloaded 64-bit and lost it. VMware didn’t seem interested in acknowledging the issue… but it wasn’t a show stopper for me and I tabled it to be tackled later.

The new version of Workstation was announced this week. A lot of the new features look interesting and I’d love to think that the Unity issue is resolved. Unfortunately, it’ll cost me $99 to find out.

See, if I had bought VMware Workstation 6.5 in October, I could now just wait a couple weeks and get a free upgrade. But since I bought it during their big sale a few weeks earlier – when surely they new a new version was coming soon – I’m hosed.

That just feels a bit cheesy, doesn’t it? Clever marketing and all… I mean, if I buy the upgrade then I might’ve well skipped the sale and just bought version 7 for full price. But it was the sale that helped convince me to buy. Ugh. Not happy at all.

There are options, of course.

For instance, I see the free VMware Player was also updated with what appear to be many of the same bells & whistles. Couple that with the free VMware Server (release notes) and you’re well on the way to what VMware Workstation offers and it is still easy to work with ESX / ESXi (unlike a complete switch to VirtualBox or KVM for example).

Possibly Related posts:

  1. VMware Desktop Sale
  2. VMware Player is more than a Player
  3. VMware and Unity Issue: Fixed
  4. Quick Look at VMware Player 2.50
  5. VMware Beta and Direct Launch

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Comments

3 Responses to “VMware Upgrade Policy Disappoints”

  1. Tweets that mention VMware Upgrade Policy Disappoints » Solo Technology -- Topsy.com says:
    October 28, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Kasten, Chris Kasten. Chris Kasten said: VMware Upgrade Policy Disappoints. Blogged at http://is.gd/4G4JK [...]

    Reply
  2. Dave B says:
    October 28, 2009 at 11:04 pm

    I was a bit miffed by it too. I’m trying to decide if the new features are worth $99 or if I’ll pass on it.

    Reply
    • Chris says:
      November 4, 2009 at 10:05 pm

      I figure I’ll install the 30 day trial and see if anything seems compelling.
      I tried to install just the new VMware Player but the installer wanted me to uninstall Workstation first..

      Reply

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