VMWare Fusion 3.1 Boosts Performance by 35%

VMWare Fusion 3.1, a virtual machine software application that lets you run Windows on your Mac, has been released.

VMWare Fusion 3.1 brings many improvements including the following:

Improved Overall Performance - 35% Faster than VMware Fusion 3.0
● Reduced time for suspending virtual machines
● Faster Windows application launch times
● Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3


2D/3D Graphics Improvements - Up to 5X Better 3D Graphics than VMware Fusion 3.0
● OpenGL 2.1 for Windows Vista
● OpenGL 2.1 for Windows 7
● Greatly improved graphics performance
● Aero is much faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7
● Some games up to 10x faster than VMware Fusion 3.0 with VMware Fusion 3.1 and latest Mac OS X release
● Greatly improved scrolling speeds in Windows Vista and Windows 7 with Mac OS X 10.6.3

Unity Improvements
● Minimizing Unity apps to the dock now shows app contents
● Works with Exposé and Dock Exposé

USB "EasyConnect"
● Easily assign USB devices to virtual machine or Mac when connected
● Remember USB device assignment between Mac and virtual machine restarts

Bigger, More Complex Virtual Machines
● 8-way SMP
● 2 TB virtual disks


PC Migration Improvements
● Improvements to Migrate Your PC assistant, including better validation of names and better location prompt
● Prompt user if Mac OS X guest account prevents guest access to shared folders instead of failing
● Open new virtual machine upon successful migration
● Enhanced user interface on PC being migrated including:
● New progress dialog on the PC being migrated as well as in VMware Fusion
● Option to show converter logs and troubleshooting steps on PC if PC migration fails
● Avoids port conflicts with Web server software installed on PC being migrated such as IIS, Tomcat, and Apache

Boot Camp Improvements
● Up to 5x disk performance in Boot Camp virtual machines
● New option to minimize prompting for password (authentication dialogs) when using Boot Camp virtual machines
● Handle Mac OS X disk changes better to avoid multiple references to Boot Camp partition in the Virtual Machine Library
● Support for Office 2010 activation in Boot Camp virtual machines

OVF Tool 2 Comes with VMware Fusion 3.1
● Directly convert between any vSphere, VMX, or OVF source format to any vSphere, VMX, or OVF target format
● Deploy virtual machines to vSphere using OVF Tool
● Import and export of OVF packages into a vApprun 1.0 workspace. For more information about vApprun, see http://labs.vmware.com/flings/vapprun

User Interface Enhancements
● Drag a disk image or virtual disk to the installation media pane of the assistant
● Add shortcut for opening a virtual machines configuration file in default text editor for VMware Fusion (Hold down option and right-click in Virtual Machine Library)

User Interface Enhancements
● User Experience Improvement Program

New Guest Operating Systems Supported
● Ubuntu 8.0.4.4: 32- and 64-bit
● Ubuntu 10.04: 32- and 64-bit
● SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
● SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1: 32- and 64-bit
● RHEL 5.4: 32- and 64-bit

A trial of VMWare Fusion is available or you can purchase a license for $79.99 at the link below...

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