Unity Mode in VMWare

I have been using VMWare some time now but started trying the Unity Mode only recently.  When running virtual machines there is the ability to switch them to Unity Mode and I only really stumbled on this when trying to maximise the screen.

So what is Unity Mode?  It basically transforms the virtual machine so the VM Windows open and run as if they are on your host machines desktop.  I found this extremely useful working from a laptop with one screen and viewing the open windows from my virtual machine next to Outlook or any other windows on my host machine desktop.

To give you a better understanding of this run your SharePoint virtual machine with Central Administration open and using the option to switch over to Unity Mode.

You will now find that everything will switch to your desktop with any open windows transferred over to. 

 

You can always distinguish a window in Unity mode as it displays the green icon when it is open.  The other thing you can do is open more windows from the virtual machine by using the green menu drop down or hitting Ctrl – Shift – U.

I found after half an hour of using Unity Mode it was making my working day a lot quicker and I wasn’t trying to flick in between my desktop and my VM.