So although I mentioned VMware Fusion 2.0 in several posts:
I finally installed version 2.0 myself this weekend. Why? VMware Fusion is a critical application for me and I wanted to wait for others to test it first and then have a maintenance release come out before I installed it on my only MacBook Pro :) If you haven't noticed there was a 2.0.1 maintenance release on November 14, 2008 which is why I finally got around to installing it over Thanksgiving weekend.
There are a number of cool features in the latest release, but probably the coolest is the Multiple Snapshots, which is something that is really helpful for Visual Studio Developers or any developers for that matter.
I like to keep multiple snapshots of a virtual machine:
- One snapshot for just the base operating system with all the latest service packs. For me this is Windows XP SP3. I dare not try Windows Vista as I can't imagine that being very usable ( bad performance I would imagine ) in a virtual machine.
- One snapshot with the the base Windows XP SP3 along with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008.
Those are my two snapshots. Everything else just gets installed into the current virtual machine. Later when I feel like the virtual machine needs a bit of cleanup, I can revert to one of the original snapshots and re-install other tools as necessary.
However, I am a rather boring user of the capability of multiple snapshots I imagine. You could take a snapshot right before you install any new software in case the installation goes bad, you get a virus, or for momentary testing. If something goes wrong or you decide you don't like the application, you can immediately revert to the old snapshot and everything is back to before you tried installing the software.
No matter how you use the new Multiple Snapshot Functionality in VMware Fusion 2.0, it sure is a nice feature.
You can download a free 30 day trial of VMware Fusion 2.0 here.
However, when you want to buy VMware Fusion 2.0, save yourself $40 and buy it here on Amazon for $39.99.