VMware Fusion Beta 4

VMware has just released Beta 4 of its Fusion product. If you are not familiar with Fusion, this is VMware's Mac OSX version of its workstation product. Although they appear to be borrowing a lot of the cutting-edge features from Parallels [Unity (called Coherence in Parallels), booting of Boot Camp partitions, and DirectX 8.1 support (introduced with Parallels 3.0)], it will be interesting to see how they compete price-wise with Parallels. While Parallels 3.0 is currently retailing for a hefty $79.99, the Fusion Beta is a free download. According to the Fusion FAQ, the final pricing has not been set. The introduction of Fusion should provide for some great old fashion competition between VMware and Parallels in the arenas of performance, features, and price which will benefit us all.

Additionally, having Fusion now allows me to finally tinker with all those pre-built VMware appliances/ images!!








(Click for full size view)

Here is a screen shot of the Smoothwall Firewall VMware appliance running on my machine.

[UPDATE] Looks like VMware has set the price. From the updated FAQ:

Customers can pre-order VMware Fusion for $39.99 from www.vmware.com/mac until the product is GA (generally available) prior to the end of August 2007, which is a 50% savings over the suggested retail price of $79.99 when it is released in August 2007.