Free Upgrade for VMWare Fusion Users

For anyone running their SharePoint virtual environment on a Mac with VMWare Fusion, VMWare announced a free upgrade for users who purchased version 1.x of the product to upgrade to 2.0. 

I’ve only played around with it briefly, but at a glance it’s a very worthwhile upgrade.  VMWare’s synopsis of the enhancements and additional features are below. And the download link is here: 

http://www.vmware.com/download/fusion/

 

Multiple Snapshots and AutoProtect

• Save your virtual machine in any number of states, and return to those states at any time
• New Snapshot UI to help you manage all the snapshots you have saved
• Automatically take snapshots at regular intervals with AutoProtect

Shared Folders Improvement and Mirrored Folders

• Shared Folders are easier to discover. New Shared Folders option in Status bar and Virtual Machine menu. Can open all Shared Folders or just a specific Shared Folder in the virtual machine
• Greatly improved reliability of shared folders—now compatible with Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and QuickBooks
• Improved compatibility running Java applications from a Shared Folder
• Map key folders in Windows Vista and Windows XP (Desktop, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures) to their corresponding Mac folders (Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures)

URL Handling

• Click on a URL in a virtual machine and open it in your favorite Mac browser, or configure your Mac to open its links in a virtual machine
• VMware Fusion supports opening URLs of the following types: Web pages (http, https), Remote Sessions (telnet, ssh), Mail (mailto), Newsgroups (news), File transfers (ftp, sftp), and RSS feeds (feed)

Application Sharing

• Allow your Mac to open applications in the virtual machine—Finder can now open your Mac's files directly in Windows applications like Microsoft Word and Windows Media Player
• Allow the virtual machine to open applications on your Mac—VMware Fusion can configure virtual machines to open their files in Mac applications like Preview and iTunes
• VMware Fusion can directly open Windows programs (.exe) and installers (.msi) in a virtual machine just by double-clicking on them in Finder

True Multiple Display Support

• VMware Fusion automatically detects multiple displays by default
• Your virtual machines will recognize each display you connect to your Mac as a separate virtual display
• Handles changes to resolution and display orientation automatically
• Option to use one or all screens in Full Screen mode
• Unity windows can be dragged between displays, and will maximize correctly to just the display they're on
• Correctly handles plugging and unplugging displays
• 3D supported on primary display when using multiple displays