They say market leadership has its privileges. When you're way out in front and the competition is just a distant blip in your rearview horizon, you get to take a breather. Coast a bit. Maybe focus on the big picture for a while. Yes, it's good to be the leader. All of which begs the question: What the hell is wrong with VMware?

The Bottom Line VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta VMware, vmware.com Beta   Cost: VMware Workstation 6 costs $189, $899 for a 5-pack, or $1,690 for a 10-pack. Platforms: Runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux hosts, and supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, Linux, Solaris x86, NetWare, and FreeBSD guests. Support for CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Asianux hosts and guests is planned; support for Windows Server 2008 as guest is experimental. Bottom Line: With Workstation 6.5, VMware demonstrates a commitment to innovation normally reserved for more competitive market segments. New features, including Easy Install, Unity, and Direct3D support, will appeal to the general VMware audience, while the integrated ACE features should prove to be real crowd-pleasers among sys admins. Overall, it's a solid point release that will help VMware extend its lead over a dwindling field of rivals. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

These guys are so far out in front that the competition has to dial 011 just to get them on the phone. This is especially true in the traditional desktop virtualization space. VMware has almost zero competition on the dominant platform, meaning Windows. Yet it continues to innovate – and at an alarming pace, no less.

Case in point: VMware Workstation 6.5. Though only just entering beta, Workstation 6.5 is already causing a stir among the virtualization faithful. That's because the feature set reads like a veritable wish list to Virtual Santa from all the good girls and boys down in the in-house development and help desk departments.

[ Read Randall Kennedy’s comparative review of VMware Workstation, Parallels Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, and innotek VirtualBox. Read his review of innotek VirtualBox 1.5.2. Read his review of the Kidaro and Sentillion desktop VM management systems, along with his sidebar on VMware ACE. ]

For example, there's the new hardware-accelerated graphics support. You can now run Direct3D applications (including some games) from within a VM, eliminating a major hurdle to achieving near-local system fidelity. Workstation 6.5 also provides a mechanism for integrating applications running within the host OS. Dubbed "Unity," it allows you to, for example, run a copy of Internet Explorer 6 inside a VM and have its client window displayed seamlessly on the host OS desktop.

From Fusion with love
Unity is a carryover from the VMware Fusion product on Mac OS X. Another carryover is the new Easy Install feature. Designed to simplify the VM creation process, Easy Install parses the disk structure of an installation CD or ISO image, then applies a preconfigured installation script if it recognizes the guest OS media.

In the case of Windows XP, Easy Install prompts you for the product key, computer name, and administrator password, then proceeds to complete the entire OS installation automatically, no user interaction required. For support professionals or developers who frequently build and tear down lots of test VMs, Easy Install could be a real time-saver. The only downside is that it's a Windows-only feature – no Easy Install for Linux, Unix, and other non-Microsoft platforms.

Another time-saver – and a surefire VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) crowd-pleaser – is the integrated Assured Computing Environment (ACE) authoring features. Now, when you create a new VM, you are given the option of enabling additional ACE configuration options such as VM image encryption and access control. Having all of these features available alongside the normal VM parameters (they appear as an additional tab in the VM's configuration page) makes leveraging ACE technologies a snap and should help new ACE users to find critical options more quickly. There's even a handy Pocket ACE calculator for projecting and configuring an appropriate portable storage model for a new VM.

Other major features included shared Smart Card support (between host and guest OS); better, more granular control over VM snapshots; and more robust networking support for mobile users (including link-state propagation for roaming wireless hosts).

Same sink, different plumbing
I tested VMware Workstation 6.5 Beta (build 84113) under Windows Server 2008. Visually, little has changed since the previous Workstation release, Version 6.03. The installation and initial UI experiences remain the same. In fact, it isn't until you start to create new VMs that the revamped plumbing starts to make itself known.