New VMware Player 3.0 is worth looking at
Ability to create VMs, plus new graphics and printing support, finally make it useful
Follow @infoworldSitting back and watching 2009 zoom past me, I noticed that the desktop virtualization market is finally beginning to grab hold within organizations. Media, analysts and vendors have been telling people about its technological wonders for years. But for one reason or another, it has taken all that time for it to really catch on. And even if organizations haven't already started implementing the technology in some form or fashion, it is at least finally making it on to their immediate roadmaps.
Desktop virtualization comes in many different flavors and can be implemented in a number of different ways. Why should it be any different from so many other virtualization technologies? By that I mean, there isn't really just one type of desktop virtualization.
[ Keep up with the latest virtualization news with InfoWorld's virtualization newsletter and visit the InfoWorld Virtualization Topic Center for news, blogs, essentials, and information about InfoWorld virtualization events. ]
VMware has been involved with desktop virtualization technologies for many years now. And while most people think about server virtualization when they think about VMware, in fact, the virtualization giant has been doing desktop virtualization for quite a few years longer than its server counterpart. Virtualizing an x86 desktop machine goes back 10 years for VMware, back to the beginning of the company's history. That's a couple of years longer than the popular ESX server virtualization product line has been on the market -- the technology that has made it so popular and wealthy today.
VMware recently launched VMware Player 3.0, and this thing isn't what you might remember from the original launch in 2005. One of the big holdups with using VMware Player back then was just as the name described: It was only a player. It couldn't actually create virtual machines. And before the days of a large virtual appliance marketplace being made available to download preconfigured virtual machines, well, there wasn't much fun or use for VMware Player. My how things have changed.
