VMware today announced VMware Fusion 1.1, a new update to its VMware Fusion desktop virtualization software for Intel-based Macs.
VMware Fusion allows Mac users to simultaneously and seamlessly run Mac OS X, Windows and other PC-based applications on the same Mac. VMware Fusion 1.1 is a free update that is immediately available for all VMware Fusion 1.0 customers and includes over 25 enhancements and improvements such as:
• Support for Mac OS X Leopard
• Improved 3D graphics with experimental support for DirectX 9.0
• Improvements to VMware Fusion’s Unity feature
• Support for Microsoft Vista Boot Camp partitions as virtual machines
• Support for French, German, and Japanese-speaking customers
• Overall performance improvements
“We have been extremely pleased with the success of VMware Fusion,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware, in the press release. “Mac customers have really embraced VMware Fusion for the intuitive user interface and stable, high-performance experience it delivers. We expect our customers will be equally thrilled with the improvements found in today’s update.”
VMware also introduced VMware Importer for VMware Fusion. Currently in beta, VMware Importer allows VMware Fusion customers to easily and quickly import virtual machines created by third-party Mac virtualization software.
“Many of our VMware Fusion customers have asked for help using virtual machines created with third party software,” continued Chu. “With VMware Importer, customers that have other, third-party Mac virtualization products can easily and seamlessly migrate existing virtual machines over to VMware Fusion to take advantage of our intuitive user interface and stable, advanced, high performance virtualization platform.”
VMware Fusion 1.1 is available at no cost to existing VMware Fusion 1.0 customers. The VMware Importer beta is also available at no cost. Both can be downloaded at http://www.vmware.com/mac.
VMware Fusion 1.1 is available in English, Japanese, German and French for immediate download or purchase from http://www.vmware.com/mac starting at US$59.99 (with a limited time $20 mail-in rebate, offer valid only in the United States).
I’ll download this later to check it out – I actually haven’t had any problems with VMware since installing Leopard, but I’ll check out the other enhancements.
Dont forget about VMware Converter. its a free app that lets you turn your windows box into a VM which can then be run in any VMware app including fusion.