VMware Answers Parallels with Fusion Beta 2

With Parallels announcing the GA release of their latest Desktop for Mac product along with all of its new and cool features, you knew VMware wouldn’t be too far behind with something up their sleeve.

VMware is working on Beta 2 of its VMware Fusion 1.0 product. Like Parallels, VMware’s Fusion for Mac is a desktop virtualization platform that lets you create and run virtual machines on your Intel-based Mac. VMware is trying to provide Mac users with an intuitive user interface, and offer them the ability to run a wide-range of pre-configured virtual machines that have been created with VMware Workstation, VMware Server, and VMware ESX Server.

Some of the features of VMware Fusion include:

• You can use 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems in Fusion virtual machines. Fusion supports Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems as a guest OS in the virtual machines.

• Fusion supports all Intel Mac hardware, including the new 64-bit Mac Pro and iMac.

• It also supports multiple virtual processors so that you can take advantage of the Intel Core Duo chips that are in today’s newest Intel Macs.

• Fusion also supports high-speed USB 2.0 for a huge range of devices. It even supports devices that do not have drivers for Mac OS X.

• Virtual machines seamlessly integrate with your Mac: you can cut and paste text between your Mac and your virtual machines, drag and drop files between your Mac and your virtual machines, and create shared folders on your computer so you can easily share files and folders between your Mac and your virtual machines.

• You can even burn CDs or DVDs to your Mac’s rewritable optical drive from within your virtual machine.

• And, you can resize your virtual machine’s display dynamically.

So, you’ve heard all of that before. What’s going to be new in Beta 2 of VMware Fusion? Good question. VMware is offering the following new features and improvements:

• Experimental 3-D graphics support – The rumors are true! You can play a selection of DirectX 8.1 games in Windows XP Service Pack 2 virtual machines.

• Snapshot feature – Take a snapshot of your virtual machine configured just the way you like it, so you can quickly roll back to that ideal state whenever you need to, with a single click. Who cares about a virus!

• Improved networking – Automatically bridge to the computer’s primary network interface. Full support for Airport wireless networking, including virtual machines behind a NAT firewall and bridged to the local Airport network. And support for up to ten virtual network interfaces

• Improved Microsoft Vista support – Support for Microsoft Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. Complete VMware Tools support for Microsoft Vista including copy/paste, dragging and dropping files, shared folders, and screen resizing.

• Improved hardware editor – Add additional virtual hard drives to a virtual machine for needed capacity.

• View the physical computer’s battery status in the virtual machine.

• Improved full screen mode – Support for plugging and unplugging displays while virtual machines are in full screen mode.

• Improved usability – an onscreen tip shows how to enter and exit full screen mode easily.

• Experimental support for Mac OS X Leopard – You can now install and run VMware Fusion on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Support is experimental because Mac OS X 10.5 is not yet released. Fusion will support the release version of OS X 10.5 in the final VMware Fusion release.

VMware is even starting to compile a list of games that are compatible with Fusion’s experimental 3-D acceleration. Games such as Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto III, Tony Hawk 3, RalliSport Challenge, X-2 Rolling Demo, Lord of the Realms III, Hitman 2, Breath of Fire IV and the Aliens vs. Predator Demo.

Sounds like VMware is building quite a large list of interesting features for Fusion. Game on!