Monday, December 20, 2004

We are proud to announce the availability of VMware Workstation 5 Beta, the latest generation of VMware's desktop application for software developers/testers and IT professionals. VMware Workstation allows users to run multiple operating systems and their applications simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked, portable virtual machines - no rebooting or hard drive partitioning required.

We have taken an exceptional product and improved it with new features and functionality that increase both individual productivity and team collaboration. Now we want to know what you think of it! As a beta tester, you can provide us with real-world testing and product feedback that will ensure the final release provides the functionality and quality that you expect from VMware Workstation.

New features:

New Teams functionality makes it easier to create and manage connected virtual machines and simulate "real world" multi-tier configurations. Multiple snapshot and snapshot management capabilities makes it easier to capture and manage multiple configurations. New cloning functionality makes it easier to copy virtual machines and share them with colleagues (full and linked clones). Movie record and playback feature for capturing activity in a virtual machine. Improved performance, especially for multi-VM and networking workloads, for suspend/resume and snapshot operations, and for shared folders and sound features. New and improved Linux user interface. New guest OS, host OS, and hardware support - 32 and 64 bit. Support for a new class of USB devices, including webcams, microphones, and speakers. Command line interface enables the automation of certain manual steps.