VMware Fusion 4 – what’s new video

What's New in VMware Fusion 4

VMware Fusion 4 is packed with more than 90 new features and enhancements

True Mac Installation Experience

• Drag and drop to install VMware Fusion to your folder of choice
• Double-click to upgrade from earlier versions of VMware Fusion
• New DMG / disc design
• Drag and drop to Trash to remove, no uninstaller needed
• USB key included with box product to install on Macs without optical drives

64-bit Cocoa App Top to Bottom

• 64-bit VMware Fusion app
• 64-bit VMware Fusion Start Menu app
• 64-bit VMware Fusion Services app
• 64-bit USB Arbitration tool
• 64-bit ThinPrint
• 64-bit core virtualization engine (first introduced in VMware Fusion 3.x)

Less Impact on Your Mac

• Zero impact on Mac resources when VMware Fusion & Start Menu are not running
• Completely self contained Cocoa app
• Run from any folder you choose
• Dynamically load and unload services on-demand
• Dynamically load and unload kernel modules on-demand

Get Started and Get Out of The Way – All New Virtual Machine Library

• New iTunes inspired Welcome to VMware Fusion to get you up and running quickly
• Refined experience to show only the information you care about and get out the way
• Show more virtual machines at once without needing to scroll
• Start virtual machine and virtual machine library goes away automatically

More Room To Work – All New Single Window View

• New smaller default toolbar to see more of your VM
• Remove status bar combined with smaller toolbar gives you more 44% more work space
  (54 Pixels New – 20+76 = 96 Old)
• Adds active device status and device settings to toolbar
• Ability to quickly show and hide active device status and device settings
• New optional “Send Ctrl-Alt-Delete” toolbar button
• New optional “Pause” toolbar button

Change Settings in a Familiar Way – All New Virtual Machine Settings

• Works like the Mac’s System Preferences
• Overlay to make it clear which virtual machine settings you are changing
• New General overview category with insight on disk space used & clean up option
• Applications Menu broken out as separate category
• Default Applications broken out as separate category
• Startup disk broken out as a separate category
• Hard Disk category simplified to put what you care about front & center and hide less relevant
• New Compatibility category for virtual machine upgrade/downgrade

Run More 3D Windows Apps and Games – Improved 2D/3D Graphics

• Greatly improved 3D graphics performance, up to 2.5X faster on OS X Lion
• Greatly improved 3D graphics reliability and performance for Windows XP virtual machines
• Support for AutoCAD 2010, 2011, 2012 for Windows XP
• Support for AutoCAD 2012 for Windows 7
• Greatly improved performance with Solidworks. Solidworks 2011 SP3 or later recommended.
• Greatly improved performance with Altium Designer
• Improved support for DOS style VGA games on Windows

Run Windows Apps Even More Like Mac Apps – Unity Gets Better

• Automatically add user installed Windows Apps to Mac Applications folder
• Automatically add user installed Windows Apps to Launchpad
• Add any selected apps to Mac Applications folder and Launchpad
• Remove specific apps from Mac Applications folder
• Search user installed and user chosen Windows apps in Spotlight
• High resolution icons up to 512×512
• Support for Mission Control
• Improved support for Spaces
• Improved support for Expose

Share More Easily – Shared & Mirrored Folders Improvements

• Downloads available as Mirrored Folder
• Movies available as Mirrored Folder
• Faster browsing of Shared and Mirrored Folders
• Updates to Mac folders now available without refresh in Windows

Lion on Lion – OS X Lion in a virtual machine

• Run OS X Lion in a virtual machine
• Run OS X Lion Server in a virtual machine
• Support for sound in OS X Lion virtual machines
• Just drag “Install Mac OS X Lion.app” onto New VM Assistant to start install

Snapshots and AutoProtect Improvements

• All new Time Machine inspired user interface to get more of snapshots
• Show snapshot trees and dependencies
• Zoom to find by date
• Resize snapshots to meet your needs
• AutoProtect defaults now optimized for optimal Time Machine compatibility
• See time of next AutoProtect snapshot in Snapshot window
• AutoProtect settings now in Snapshot window for easier setup

Virtual Disk Management Improvements

• New disk space usage break-down in General pane of Virtual Machine Settings
• Shrink Windows virtual disks with snapshots (snapshots must be created in Fusion 4 or later)
• Shrinking Windows virtual disk faster than previous versions of VMware Fusion
• Ability to resize Mac virtual disks and then update virtual partition size with Apple’s Disk Utility

PC Migration Improvements

• Fastest PC Migration solution now works when running on OS X Lion

Transition Animations All New

• Switch Full Screen to Unity
• Switch Single Windows to Full Screen
• Bring Up Settings
• Bring Up Snapshots

Networking Improvements

• NAT: Handle changes between wired and wireless networking more seamlessly
• NAT: Improved proxy detection

USB Improvements

• Option to set devices to connect to Mac by default, ask, or connect to Windows

Bluetooth All New

• Virtual Bluetooth support
• Connect phone to a virtual machine, sharing with Mac

Encrypted Virtual Machines All New

• AES encrypted virtual machines for when security is needed
• Password required to open encrypted virtual machines

Pause Your Virtual Machines All New

• Pause your full screen & single window VMs to give you more resources when you need them

Remote Disc All New

• Remote Disc drive support to install OS & software on MacBook Airs from a remote CD/DVD

Audio Improvements

• HD Audio with up to 5.1 Audio
• Improved support for audio and video conferencing applications on Windows 7

Optimized for latest multicore Macs

• Improved virtual SMP performance lets you get the most of new quad core Macs

CPU Improvements

• Optimized support for latest Intel processors including Intel Sandy Bridge
• Support for AVX multimedia instructions with Intel Sandy Bridge

Other

• Suspend virtual machines without prompt when closing virtual machines or quitting app
• Updated Quick Look plug-in for virtual machines
• Open and Run menu option to add a virtual machine to Virtual Machine Library and run it

Learning Center

• New online learning center to get the most of VMware Fusion

New Guest Operating Systems Supported

• Mac OS X 10.7
• Mac OS X Server 10.7
• CentOS 6.0
• Debian 6.0
• FreeBSD 8.2
• Mandriva 2010
• openSUSE 11.4
• SUSE Linux 11 SP1
• RHEL 6.0
• VMware ESX 5

Full Product and Support – You can get the full product and support here.

Upgrades – You can upgrade your previous release of VMware Fusion here.

Volume Discounts – You can get some discount when you buy 10 or more copies.