Windows 2 Apples

Link to video of Vista speech running on an iMac using VMware.

I had originally intended to review a recent unhappy experience with the Apple support team, however, VMware Fusion and Vista Business arrived and I have been happily distracted.

Installation, of VMware Fusion, was painless requiring very little intervention which was impressive given I was fully expecting it to convert my Macintosh to the proverbial magic carpet ride. I had read this was the year of virtual machine software and companies. Now, I can understand the excitement and media buzz.

Before installing Vista Business, I decided to experiment by installing Ubuntu linux. This required I select Linux as the operating system and the linux distribution I was installing. Of course, Ubuntu is listed among those recognized by VMware Fusion. The install simply required that I insert the CD and specify the drive where my virtual machine files would reside and opt into a few recommended setting.

After reading the VMware promotional copy, I was unsure whether I would be forced to initially install virtual machines on my Macintosh hard drive and was very relieved to see that it immediately accepted my external fire wire as the destination for my virtual linux “box”.

Within very short time, I was booting to a virtual Ubuntu machine on my western digital external firewire drive. Ubuntu greeted me with a request to install 120 security updates and I was pleasantly surprised at how snappy the system responded and how quickly the updates were downloaded and installed.

The folks at VMware highly recommend users install VMware Fusion Tools to enhance performance and the ease with which they are able to shift between virtual machines and the Macintosh desktop. This turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated, finally, requiring that I go to the Ubuntu web site where I found an easy to follow list of required Linux command line entries.

Once VMware Tools were installed, I immediately detected improvement in performance and shifting between Desktop and the Macintosh desktop required I only move the mouse to the desired target. I was able to use all of the tested Linux applications,however, I unable to get my USB audio adapters to work reliably.

Initially, I was using the VXI audio interface shipped with the iListen software. The audio playback through the headset was distorted with crackling sounds and breaks in the audio stream. I attempted to use several other USB audio interfaces including one manufactured by M-Audio with no improvement in audio playback. I was really never very successful in recording audio from any mike other than the built in mike and volume was extremely low.

At this point, I was getting a bit nervous considering that I had made these purchases and invested this time so that I could install Vista and use the Vista speech engine to dictate while setting at my Mac. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded and I was happy to discover after installing Vista Business it immediately recognize all of my USB audio adapters.

Installing the Vista Business operating system was as easy if not easier than the initial installation of linux. I simply had to enter my name, and optional password and of course the product code number. All other entries were left at the defaults offered by the VMware install wizard. After making these entries I left the machine and took a nice long walk with my Creative Labs MP3 player.

As with the linux install, I had specified my external firewire drive as the target for the new Vista virtual machine. After returning from my walk the new virtual Vista Business installation was sitting on my fire wire drive. Now two machines were listed in my virtual machine library. After selecting the Vista entry, I was greeted with the familiar Vista logon screen and noticed that the VMware tools had been installed without any intervention from me. Bravo!

I was amazed at how responsive Vista was. As Vista was initializing I had used the VMware fusion virtual machine menu to assign my USB Telex audio interface to the virtual Vista machine. I immediately activated Vista speech recognition and was pleased to see the Telex audio interface recognized and respond flawlessly during the speech recognition audio setup.

I spent approximately 20 to 30 minutes going through the Vista speech recognition tutorial, which not only reviews the basics of Vista speech control commands, but also serves as a brief training session allowing Vista to accommodate to your voice.

I was extremely pleased to find that after this very short training period the system responded to my commands without fail and the speech to text conversion was almost as accurate as what I experience using my well trained Naturally Speaking Dragon software installed on my XP computer.

I was unable to use the built in a iSight camera without installing boot camp so I tried using an old Creative Labs WebCam model 4000. Vista dutifully informed me a driver was needed and searched the web until it located the Creative Labs web site and downloaded the required drivers and accessory software. The camera worked, however, the picture update rate was very slow.

I deleted the Creative Labs drivers and inserted my Microsoft VX 6000 install disk. I was immediately informed there was a conflict with the current version of Vista and again Windows reached out through the Internet to download current drivers and application software. After the install, the camera worked beautifully. The quality of the picture seems better running in my virtual Vista machine than it does on my Vista laptop machine.

So far the only application I have not been able to run is Windows Movie Maker. When launched, I am informed that the video card in my machine does not support this application. I believe VMware is developing enhanced video drivers but as of this date none are available for Vista. I was disappointed to discover that my firewire Sony video camcorder is not recognized by Vista running under VMware Fusion. Happily, it works beautifully in OS X and on my other XP and Vista machines.

I’m extremely pleased with Fusion and the amazing performance of the Vista speech engine on my iMac. After dictating, I simply save my text to a shared folder on my Macintosh and load into either Microsoft Word or Pages.

Although the initial rollout of Vista was certainly not the WOW experience promised by Microsoft, the magic of virtualization combined with Vista and it’s marvelous speech engine definitely provides a genuine WOW experience. I will continue experimenting with Vista applications running within the VMware Fusion environment and update in our next podcasts and blog.

Remember, changes is forever always with us and tomorrow a new adventure.

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