Filed under: Software
VMware Fusion Beta 2 now available
VMware, the top banana in the virtualization market though relative new comer to the Mac, has just released Fusion Beta 2, their Mac virtualization client. Fusion, much like Parallels, allows you to run Windows (and many other operating systems) on your Mac just like you would any other application.
Fusion Beta 2 adds some interesting features:
- Support for DirectX8.1 on Windows XP virtual machines (DirectX is Microsoft's APIs for multimedia applications, i.e. games that use graphics acceleration).
- Snapshots of virtual machines: take a snapshot of one of your virtual machines, and you can always recover to that point in time.
- Support for Vista (both 32 and 64-bit flavors)
- Much better networking: including seamless switching between Airport networks and support for up to 10 virtual network interfaces (very cool, if you ask me)
Update: It is true that Fusion Beta 2 is available now, but it was also available a few weeks ago! I am the victim of a poor memory and a tardy PR email. However, now is a good chance to check Fusion if you haven't (see how I saved this post from irrelevance? That's the mark of a pro blogger).
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Thecompkid said 3:51PM on 3-20-2007
I don't think you have to explain what directx is. :)
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hibiscusroto said 8:09PM on 3-20-2007
If VMWare can create coherence-like functionality and can access a boot camp partition then Parallels will be in real trouble. Perhaps VMWare will purchase Parallels in order to achieve this.
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neckaros said 9:54AM on 3-27-2007
Maybe it's old news but thanks to your reminder i'm testing it and loving it :)
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Christopher Price said 6:35PM on 3-20-2007
VMWare send this "tardy" email to all VMWare downloaders. I suspect the delay was to minimize bandwidth usage... early adopters browsing MacUpdate (sites) flooded VMWare, that has subsided, and now they send out the email so everyone else can update.
- Christopher Price
http://www.phonenews.com
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Ryan said 9:49PM on 3-20-2007
Yeah sorry for jumping the gun on submitting this one.
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mathie said 7:45AM on 3-23-2007
Yeah, I got excited when I got the email, thinking "ooh, new beta", went to download it and while reading more of the email thought, "wait a cotton picking minute, didn't they introduce DirectX support in the last beta?" So I launched it, checked the about screen and sure enough they were the same version. Bit of a disappointment, really...
-- Graeme Mathieson
http://woss.name/
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