It’s been two months since we released VMware Fusion 4, and we have been thrilled with the response from our customers and the VMware Fusion community. We have also been listening carefully to how we can improve.
To that end, we’ve been working hard and are pleased to announce the release of VMware Fusion 4.1, available today as a free update for all VMware Fusion 4 customers.
Here in the US we’re about to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. VMware Fusion 4.1 is our thanks to you, our users.
Here’s a short summary of the key features and improvements in VMware Fusion 4.1
Smart Full Screen
The number one feature request we saw from VMware Fusion 4 users was for native Lion full screen mode. But we knew we had to get it right; to work out all the corners cases and make sure it met all the same requirements as the old full screen and worked seamlessly with Mac OS X Lion.
Here is how full screen works with VMware Fusion 4.1
- The standard Lion full screen button is now used in virtual machine windows.
- Like other full screen Lion applications, a VMware Fusion virtual machine will move to a new full screen space when using a single display.
- If you are using multiple displays, VMware Fusion will intelligently decide whether to use a full screen space or not. If the virtual machine is configured to use all displays in full screen, it will move to a full screen space. If not, full screen will take the whole display in the current space. This allows working in Mac applications on one display while the virtual machine can make full use of the other.
- The full menu bar is now accessible from full screen mode in both Snow Leopard and Lion. We added a short delay in showing the menu which allows users to access the top of the virtual machine screen, particularly useful when running Mac OS X Lion or Ubuntu in a virtual machine.
- When working with multiple displays some users might prefer the optional full screen minibar. It provides quick access to common actions without leaving full screen mode. It takes minimal space on the screen and can even auto-hide.
The Return of automatically powering on favorite virtual machines
We removed this feature in VMware Fusion 4 and you really wanted it back. Virtual machines can now be powered on automatically when VMware Fusion starts. This can be set for each virtual machine under Settings > General.
Faster than ever!
We’ve worked top to bottom to make VMware Fusion even faster. A few of the improvements are:
Greatly improved graphics performance for Internet Explorer 9 with hardware accelerated graphics are up to 6x faster than VMware Fusion 4.
- Improved rendering correctness in Solidworks 2012.
- Improved graphics performance when using Mac OS X 10.7.2.
- Improved animations for full screen mode, unity mode, library and snapshots.
- Improved startup time with Windows 7 virtual machines.
OS X Lion as a guest just got better.
Improved Mac OS X Lion virtual machine support including smoother mouse movement and support for FileVault 2 when using Mac OS X 10.7.2 and later.
See the release notes for more details on other fixes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion4/doc/releasenotes_fusion_41.html
Update to VMware Fusion 4.1 Today!
If you already own VMware Fusion 4, you will be prompted to install the free update to VMware Fusion 4.1 on your next launch or select Check for Updates from the VMware Fusion menu.
After downloading and installing VMware Fusion 4.1, make sure to update VMware Tools in the Virtual Machine.
Try VMware Fusion 4.1 Today!
If you would like to try VMware Fusion 4.1, click here to download a free 30-day trial.
Thanks for your support!
As we approach this Thanksgiving holiday in the US, we can’t thank you enough for your support and we hope you enjoy using VMware Fusion 4.1 as much as we did making it.
