VMware Player is an easy-to-use application will offer users the possibility to run any virtual machine on their computer.

Get more out of your existing computer hardware. Use the free VMware Player application to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC.

With VMware Player, you can use any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Server or VMware ESX, as well as Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machines and Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines. Import third party images including Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly called Live State Recovery) images, Norton Ghost 10 images, Norton Save & Restore images, StorageCraft ShadowProtect images, and Acronis True Image images to VMware Player compatible virtual machines. Use 32- and 64-bit Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86 operating systems side-by-side, without rebooting or partitioning your hard drive.

Here are some key features of "VMware Player":

Leverage 2-way Virtual SMP:
· Users can run virtual machines with multiple CPUs to experience improved performance when working with multi-threaded, resource-intensive software.

Use 3rd-party virtual machines and images:
· Open Microsoft virtual machines, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly called Live State Recovery) images, Norton Ghost 10 images, Norton Save & Restore images, StorageCraft ShadowProtect images, and Acronis True Image images. In this process, the initial virtual machine or image is left untouched in its native format and any modifications are saved in a much smaller VMware-formatted file that is linked to the initial image.

Share data between host computer and virtual machine:
· Copy text and files between the virtual machine and the host PC. Drag and drop files between a Windows host PC and a Windows virtual machine. Or, enable Shared Folders to seamlessly access data on your host computer.

Broad host and guest operating system support:
· Run any of the over 60 supported 32- and 64-bit guest operating systems including Vista, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Ubuntu 6.10, Ubuntu 7.04, Ubuntu 8.04, and many more.

Support for USB 2.0 devices:
· Use peripherals that require high-speed performance in your VMs, such as MP3 Players and fast storage devices.

Get appliance info at start-up:
· Start a virtual appliance in the appliance view to review brief description and other relevant information provided by the appliance author.

Gain easy access to virtual machines via intuitive home page interface:
· Leverage an intuitive home page interface that lets you open existing virtual machines or browse the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace to download any of the over 900 virtual appliances. Virtual appliances are pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-run enterprise software applications packaged along with an operating system within virtual machines.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Starting from this release, VMware has set the killbit on its ActiveX controls. Setting the killbit ensures that ActiveX controls cannot run in Internet Explorer (IE), and avoids security issues involving ActiveX controls in IE. See the KB article 240797 available from Microsoft and the related references on this topic.
· Security vulnerabilities have been reported for ActiveX controls provided by VMware when run in IE. Under specific circumstances, exploitation of these ActiveX controls might result in denial-of-service or allow running of arbitrary code when the user browses a malicious Web site or opens a malicious file in IE browser. An attempt to run unsafe ActiveX controls in Internet Explorer might result in pop-up windows warning the user.
· Note: IE can be configured to run unsafe ActiveX controls without prompting. VMware recommends that you retain the default settings in IE, which prompts when unsafe actions are requested.
· Earlier, VMware had issued knowledge base articles,...