Vmware is releasing information about the forthcoming 2.x version of Vmware Fusion. Actually, it is available for download now as a beta release. And this one is sure to please. Why?
Multiple screen support!
This is great news for me and should be for any Mac user who has more than one monitor. My Mac Pro has 4 screens attached. OS X runs multiple monitors as well as Windows does, however before now, when I ran Windows in a VM session, I was limited to a single screen. I could run Windows in a window, but I could not take advantage of the multiple screen support inherent in Windows. This is something I used all the time when running Windows natively.
Here is a video from the folks at VMWare showing this off:
Other features coming to 2.X are:
- Increases support for DirectX 9
- Import virtual machines from competing products into VMware Fusion
- Easier printing from within Windows (although I have never had a problem doing this before)
- More native OS X design for VMWare Fusion
For the full list of improvements, go here.
So, this is great news for me.
Rich told me by phone he though this was ironic…making it easier to run Windows on a Mac. He said if Windows is that good, go get a Windows box. But, here is the point: this is virtualization. And this is powerful virtualization. The goal of a virtual machine is to run it as close to natively as possible. I am a Mac user who, yes, does use Windows still. Some apps are just better with Windows than OS X. The fact that I can run both simultaneously, switching operating systems with a simply keyboard shortcut (using Spaces)….well, you can’t do that on Windows natively.
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