Free version of Fusion from VMWare

VMWare is offering a free version of Fusion Player for personal use. One does need to fill out a form, ironically it requires a company name. But you need to validate your e-mail address. I am using a ‘hide my e-mail address’ offered through Safari. But I never get the e-mail, oops, it was in Junk, why? However I have gone in circles trying to download it for ‘personal consumption’. When I hit the download button it wants me to log back in, then you’re right back where you started. Are there any tricks? I do see the place to buy the pro version for $199, and the Player version for $149.

The e-mail sent has link for contacting support. Click it, and I go to page where there is an obvious ‘contact support’ , clicking that takes me to the log in page again, and again you are right back where you started.

Thanks

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I posted regarding the free account a long time ago and when I acquired that, it was very easy to download. You have to set up an account as that is required. Maybe you’ve tried it but this is the page I bookmarked before:

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal

Thanks for replying jk2gs. Tried the link you gave, nope, everytime it wants you to log in, and that take you back to the top level page. Navigating to the download page, again wants you to log in. But you can’t contact them to let them know there is a problem, as that route does exactly the same thing! I did delete my cookies for the page, maybe I need to clear all caches.

I did mine a year ago so I don’t recall the specifics. There are blogs on the site so you could try searching there for help.

Be careful with that particular link. It may forward you to obtain a Fusion 12 personal use license.

To get a Fusion 13 personal use license, use the following link:

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal-13

You will need to be registered for a VMware account. For some reason VMware wants you to fill out a company name, title, number of employees, etc for a personal use license. . Just make them up, they don’t matter.

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That’s the version I have which is what I use with Catalina.

phillman5 probably wants Version 13.

I used Cocktail to clear caches, that seems to have cleared up the problems I was having, I also cleared VMWare cookies.

Thanks All.

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Another issue I see a lot in the past year or so, is that if you’re using an adblocker, you probably need to use the “reload without contact blockers” option that you get when long-pressing on the reload icon in Safari. That can eliminate a myriad of issues like you’re experiencing, in my experience.

15 months later it seems they have announced the same deal:

It’s not really the same as now you can get the Pro versions for free where before, it was the lesser featured Player version which is not going to be available anymore.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Broadcom will be continuing a “free for personal use” VMware license option, never mind applying it to the “pro” versions of their desktop apps. Broadcom previously had been a bit brutal about consolidating VMware’s enterprise offerings during the acquisition.

At the same time, I wasn’t surprised that they dropped the entry-level, non “pro” commercial editions of the apps, so it looks like the least expensive commercial version is now $120/year.

(edited for clarity)

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The positive side of that $120 yearly subscription (beyond the access to any new version released during your subscription term) is that it includes access to support. With the old model, access to tech support for commercial use was an extra cost. If you’re depending on it for your work, it’s probably money well spent. Without a support subscription, your only recourse if you had a problem was to post in the community boards and hope that someone would respond and had a solution.

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Unfortunately, it seems as though Broadcom is sunsetting Fusion. Here is a statement from Broadcom on the subject published on Network World:

[End of road for VMware’s end-user computing and security units: Broadcom | Network World]
Tan said Broadcom is refocusing VMWare on creating private and hybrid cloud environments for large enterprises and divesting its non-core assets.

(End of road for VMware’s end-user computing and security units: Broadcom | Network World)

Additionally, when I properly registered with Broadcom and attempted to download the latest version of Fusion, it locked me out for over a month indicating my request waw being reviewed. Attempts to reach support have been in vain as I was told to post it in community support which obviously can’t fix a validation or website issue. I even physically visited their corporate headquarters in Palo Alto and spoke to a person who sent an email to a manager to get back to me. To date, despite 3 replies to the email I was copied on, that has not happened as I have yet to receive a reply. One possible reason is that the article indicated many VMware employees were leaving or have left.

What all this means to me is that it is likely that Fusion for Mac, Personal Edition is now a dead product as far as Broadcom is concerned. I’m not sure what to switch to as I am about to switch to Parallels which is subscription based. What I was able to do was update my current copy of Fusion via the App to the latest, and possibly the last version.

I do plan to make one last attempt by calling Investor Relations of Broadcom as I happen to be a stockholder in order to either get traction or news on what is to become of Fusion. I get a useful response I plan to post it here.

Any other thoughts on this would be welcome.

While that announcement seems alarming, it is old news: Broadcom has already sold off the former VMWare “end-user computing” unit to KKR, who renamed the company to Omnissa.

But “end-user computing” doesn’t include VMware Workstation and Fusion! It is the VMware Horizon VDI and Workplace ONE products.

VMware Workstation and Fusion are in the VMware Cloud Foundation divisions, which are still part of Broadcom. Think of it this way: most of the product is in the virtualization engine, which is the same, I think, as the Enterprise virtualization products (e.g. ESX).

You’re not the only one that hit registration problems downloading the latest version of Fusion. It seems to be widespread, due to Broadcom mismanaging the transition. The workaround is to download the Fusion upgrade from Twitter, and check the hash.

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Thank you for this update. I had heard about Omnissa but interesting enough it seems to be on the corporate campus at Broadcom. However, I do not have an X (Twitter) account and I am not about to get one given the behavior of Elon Musk and privacy concerns. So, my only option, unlikely to get traction, is Stockholder relations, especially, according to the article there has been a mass exodus of VMware employees.

The download page is still there. Use the following link and then click on the Pro download further down the page:

I’m stuck at Version 12 for my older Mac Mini but I was able to download the latest Version 13.5.2 so maybe give it another try.

If you think there’s something wrong with your account, maybe try to make a new one.

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Thank you for your suggestion but I have been there and done that and created a Broadcom account as well. However, for around 2 months I keep getting this message when trying to download the latest edition which has changed to “Not Entitled”. I originally purchased a license for Fusion and had been using the free personal edition since it changed over to that. It is currently running on my Mac. I am fully retired, live alone and the only income I receive other than from investments and IRA’s is Social Security. The only ‘work’ I do is totally uncompensated work for a non-profit by facilitating a chronic pain support group. Broadcom Support refuses to assist by sending me to community support which obviously can’t fix this.

Around a month ago I made contact with Alan Renouf in person at the Broadcom campus who copied me an email sent to Michael Roy, the same person who penned the VMware Fusion Pro blog of May 13, but have never heard back from him nor Alan Renouf, despite 3 follow-up messages, the last one a week ago. This is not what I consider to be any kind of credible support. So, I am now stuck between a rock and a hard spot with Broadcom. Other than investor relations, I am out of ideas. Any suggestions would be appreciated. If that does not work, which I doubt the only other thing I can think of doing is to share Mr. Roy’s email address on this site and hope that many others with similar issues all email him, Mr. Roy or someone will finally take notice and finally offer a solution.

I have no other ideas except that there must be some sort of issue with your paid license and the free one. I never bought a paid version as I had very little need for the product but when it became free for the Player version around version 11 or 12, I gave it a try just to see how well it would work with some older OS versions like Snow Leopard.

I still think you should try to make a new/different account using maybe a different name like a middle one if you haven’t tried that yet, then try to download the free version. Since the Fusion software is probably not their highest priority, that may be one reason you’re having issues.

I’d obviously prefer to do The Right Thing™ and use my Broadcom account but until they pull their finger out and let us download what we paid for, here are links to copies of the downloaded files (use the Broadcom portal to verify you have the correct files by computing the checksums on the files you download):

Right now I’m getting “Account verification is Pending. Try after some time”, and have for some considerable time now on the account I migrated my commercial licenses from, when downloading the “Personal Use” version (same binaries); on the commercial version, I’m just “Not Entitled”. I have not yet tried to create a completely new account. Perhaps when I’ve a mind to grab the next update I’ll do it, but I’m obviously frustrated that such monumental incompetence has made this necessary. Maybe it’ll help you, and I apologise for the unpleasant smell of piracy, but I don’t think this is at all unreasonable for people who find themselves in this situation. :( Good luck.

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I’m still getting the “Account verification is pending” error after 2 months. I just opened a case.

I’m wondering if the problem is with users who a) previously had a VMware account, which they migrated to Broadcom, and b) have no company name.

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