Last night, sleepy eyed I attended a phone conference with VMware and saw first hand the features of VMware Fusion. Not a mac user, I was a little suprised at how cool it actually was. Actually it impressed me so much I am going to buy a mac. VMware fusion will allow me to get the "Mac" feeling and slick user interface but still have access to all the Windows based productivity applications that I need. Read on for more.

A number of things impressed me about this product, but the most impressive things were Expose and Unity. These two parts of VMware Fusion allow a user to launch a windows application inside the Mac os as an application and not have the full screen VM up to use the app. So you can launch Outlook from your desktop like any other Mac application when you need to integrate into that tough corporate network, or launch XP's IE7 version for your web testing.

So you are a mac user and want to build a windows virtual machine ? Don't stress, it is automated. It is as easy as selecting the operating system required, entering the product key and hitting ok. VMware Fusion will do the rest. Over 60 operating systems are supported, but the kicker is that both 32 bit and 64 bit vm's are supported on the mac os. Multiple processors are supported for vm's, up to 8gb of ram per vm, and the vm disk size can be nearly a terabyte! The virtual machine hard drive does not take up the full size that is specified until it is used, so if you have a 30gb disk in your virtual machine and only 1gb of data in use, it will only take up 1gb of disk space.

Current pricing of VMware fusion comes in at 79.99 USD with a 20 dollar mail in rebate until December 31st. The ten license pack is cheaper per unit at 499 USD, which works out at 49.99 USD.

If you are inside a vm running on fusion, you can access all the files and folders on your mac. You can also see the battery life of your macbook inside the vm as it reads the hardware natively. Fusion runs has a cocoa-native interface which allows speed almost that of native hardware, and will not change windows HAL's from standard. A VM running on Parallels changes the boot.ini and the HAL which can cause problems with some windows configurations. If you want to convert a VM from Parallels you can do it using VMware Converter.

Fusion is currently under testing with Leopard and Leopard will be fully supported by it's release date.

VMware lists the key features of VMware Fusion as :

• Windows Easy Install - A Smarter Way to Install Windows
  You don’t have to be a Windows guru to install Windows on your Mac. Answer a
  few simple questions, insert a Windows CD and VMware Fusion will create an
  optimal Windows virtual machine for your Mac.
• Boot Camp Friendly
  You no longer have to choose between Windows or Mac – run Windows XP
  alongside Mac OS X from your existing Boot Camp partition.
• Snapshot - Turn Back Time
  Protect your PC installation—take a snapshot of your virtual machine so you can
  quickly return to a safe point if any problems occur.
• Drag and Drop Files
  Just drag and drop files to easily share data between Mac and virtual machines.
  Or, save directly to your Mac’s home folder or any folder you choose with Shared
  Folders.
• Migrate your existing PC to the Mac
  VMware Converter Starter Edition, available as a free download from
  www.vmware.com/converter , lets you migrate existing Windows machines or
  virtual machines into VMware virtual machines for use on the Mac.
• Play 3D Games with Experimental DirectX 8.1 3D support
  Hardware-accelerated 3D graphics let you run DirectX 8.1 applications and play
  select 3D games in Windows XP virtual machines.
• Use your favorite USB 2.0 devices
  VMware Fusion offers complete USB 2.0 support - even for proprietary video
  cameras, GPS, Bluetooth, and other devices that may only work in Windows.
• Burn CDs and DVDs
  VMware Fusion fully supports your SuperDrive in any virtual machine.

So if you are a Mac user and want a great virtualisation solution, check out VMware Fusion.