New Beta For Fusion For Mac: VMWare Improves Virtualization Software

Not to be outdone by the release of Parallels 3.0, VMWare has announced the availability of the fourth beta for VMWare Fusion for Mac, another Mac OS X virtual environment for Windows. Beta 4 features a new tool, dubbed Unity, which integrates Windows applications into OS X and offers a new “Launch palette” designed to make switching between OS X and Windows much easier (video after the jump).

Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion allows Mac users to run Windows in a virtual machine without rebooting or switching OSes. VMWare also offers pre-configured virtual machines including a whole library of virtual appliances with pre-installed applications and operating systems.

Beta 4 also improves on some other areas:

• Boot Camp improvements ??? You no longer have to choose between Windows or Mac-run Windows XP with Mac OSX off your existing Boot Camp partition. Beta 4 adds experimental support for Microsoft Vista, greatly improves Boot Camp partition detection, and when you are running the Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine, VMware Fusion automatically updates the Boot Camp partition to use drivers that are optimized for your virtual machine.
• Improved performance ??? Virtual machines boot faster and applications launch faster from virtual hard disks. Interactive performance is improved over previous betas and VMware Fusion now uses Apple's multithreaded OpenGL engine for improved performance.
• Improved user experience ??? The toolbar is greatly enhanced and is now completely customizable. To make the display less cluttered and easier to use, the virtual hardware buttons have been moved from the toolbar to the status bar. The virtual machine hardware editor is a now sheet attached to the virtual machine you are editing.

VMWare Fusion for Mac beta 4 is a free download, though you'll have to fill out the registration form.

Here's a demo video of the new Unity features in action:

[via Hackszine]