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)

All in all, Fusion is shaping up to be very nice, though they are still missing Coherence mode which is Parallels killer feature. The Fusion Beta 2 is free (while it is in beta).

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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