A few days ago CodeWeavers was giving away full copies of its software for free. Free is cool so naturally I grabed a copy of CrossOver Mac to add to my arsenal of tools for running Windows software on my Mac. The problem is that CrossOver sucks! I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would choose this option over VMWare Fusion or a similar virtual machine software solution…especially if you are running a newer Intel based Mac with lots of power. I tried unsuccessefully to get PaintShop Pro 9 to run using CrossOver. I got Microsoft Word 2007 installed, but only partly functional. In addition there is no support for cleartype which means all the fonts look terrible. Logos Bible Software was also a no-go. On the other hand I can run all the above mentioned software in Unity Mode using VMware Fusion with almost no dicernable lag time and no limitations of features. I did get VMware Fusion at an educational discount of $50 which means it cost me the same as CrossOver would normally cost, but even if I had paid the full $80 it would have been well worth it. Maybe I will find a good use for Crossover in the future, but for now it just sits quietly in the Applications folder waiting to come to life.