First off, Journal Skins. Don't put the interface in my face if you don't intend to let me use it, DA. u_u

But more pressing material for rant is VMware Workstation 7.. which at least for my hardware is now VMware Doesn't-Workstation... The Student license of that thing when I got it was around $100. I don't remember exactly how much, just that it was pricey. That included no upgrades. In fact, they released a new version months after my purchase, but didn't include me in the group of people who could upgrade to at least get their money's worth, so my copy was almost immediately rendered obsolete and required manually hacking VMs made in Workstation 8 to get them to work, even though the only thing keeping them from working was the version number.

Now, after upgrading my hardware, Workstation doesn't work at all. It'll run on my computer, but as far as running a guest operating system, which is its primary function, it is completely useless. I get this weird error when the VM boots, right after getting the menu in Linux asking if I want to run/install/etc.. "The CPU has been disabled by the Guest operating system ..." Looking into this error, it usually occurs when someone is trying to hack Mac OS to run in VMware, or if Speedstep is enabled on the guest. I went as far as to even disable Speedstep in the BIOS of my machine. None of this helped. It appears to get this same error no matter what Guest OS I'm trying to run! Even Ubuntu, which is specifically mentioned in the list of supported operating systems.

Where it gets really and truly infuriating is that the error hasn't been widely documented for anything BUT Mac OSX hacks. And those forums and a somewhat limited knowledge base are all the support that is offered... wait for it... without paying $49.99 PER INCIDENT. That's right, they want half the software's value just for one session with tech support, either via email or phone, something they should probably be supplying free of charge for the obscene amount of money they charge for this thing..

Needless to say, after all the times I've gotten burned by VMware on just this one program alone, I'm through with them. I nuked Workstation from my computer and went through with a fine toothed comb just to make sure it was completely gone. May this journal stand as a warning to anyone thinking of purchasing a VMware product. . you most likely WON'T get your money's worth.

**Edit**: As if I needed any more reasons not to deal with VMware anymore, I installed VirtualBox and it is working perfectly. I find it a bit disturbing though that software which is free (GPLv2) works fine while proprietary licensed software consistently fails..