The Palo Alto, California-based VMware has announced that Beta 2 of its free "Fusion" virtualization software for Macintosh desktops and laptops can now be downloaded from its Web site. VMware launched the original beta on December 21. In the latest beta version of Fusion, VMware has included experimental three-dimensional graphics that will allow users to play some DirectX 8.1 games on a virtual Windows XP machine. Beta 2 also supports Microsoft"s Windows Vista operating system and offers "experimental" support for Apple"s new operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), which will be released later in 2007.
Fusion also comes with a new feature called "Rollback," which allows users to take a snapshot of their virtual machine configuration and then allows them to return to that configuration at any time. In addition, VMware is also offering support for Apple"s AirPort wireless network. The software will also support up to 10 virtual network interfaces. The full public version of Fusion should be released later in 2007, the company said in a statement.