The VMware Fusion team is proud to announce the release of VMware Importer Beta 2, for the importation of third-party Mac-based virtual machines to run using VMware Fusion.

We're especially excited about this release, as users can now import virtual machines created with *Virtual PC 7.0 for Mac*!

Even though we live and breath Intel-based Macs here on Team Fusion, it's important to remember that Intel-Macs have only been around for a little under two years now.

That means there's a lot of Mac users out there using Virtual PC 7.0 on their trusty PowerBook, iBooks, G4 and G5 Towers, and more. When it comes time to upgrade to a shiny new Intel-Mac, well, we on Team Fusion want those users to have a smooth upgrade process to the most seamless way to run Windows on a Mac.

VMware Importer Beta 2 allows for the importation of Virtual PC 7.0-based virtual machines with the following operating systems:

1. Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
2. Windows XP Service Pack 2
3. Windows Server 2003

VMware Importer Beta 2 also lets users import virtual machines created using Parallels Desktop for Mac 2.5 and 3.0, including:

1. Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
2. Windows XP Service Pack 2
3. Windows Server 2003
4. Windows Vista

Check out the VMware Importer Beta 2 landing page here, and give it a whirl!

And, as always, users looking to convert a physical PC to run as a virtual machine under VMware Fusion can use VMware Converter Starter Edition to do just that in a snap.

Questions and comments are always welcome at the VMware Fusion community forums, where Fusion users come to talk Mac virtualization.

Combing through my Google Alerts this morning, I was pleased to see that VMware Fusion had garnered another positive product review in the blogosphere .

I was that much more excited when I clicked through, only to realize that the Alaskan Apple Users Group had awarded VMware Fusion their highest accolade for a Mac software product: the fabled "Five Mooses" (pictured above).

Excellent! The team is honored to add another positive highlight to the growing stack of reviews and award, and would like to thank the Alaskan Apple User's Group and the reviewer, Ronald Schoedel, for their support!

Welcome to the new blog for the VMware Fusion team here at VMware. We'll be covering all sorts of topics on the blog, from the product itself, Mac virtualization as a larger space, "Fusion in the news," and more. Pretty much anything we want to have an open conversation about, we'll try to get up here to spur it on.

Up to this point, we've been using the main VMware VMTN blog as our "home away from home" and had some success with some fairly well-received posts like "Top Ten Things You Can Do with VMware Fusion on Your Mac " (front page of Digg! W00t!) and others. But it's time for us to move out on our own. We'll still show up there from time to time, but our goal is to have a place on the web that is "all Fusion, all the time." And this blog will aim to be that.

We'll see what sort of cast of characters we get up on here. We'll definitely see our fair share of Pete Kazanjy, as the product marketing lead (hi!), my boss, Pat Lee, our product management lead, and Group Manager of Consumer Products at VMware. But ideally we'll be getting some of our rock star engineers up here too. You may have met Ben Gertzfield already, either through his blog, or other places on the web, like this killer tech talk he gave at Google on "Inside VMware Fusion ." Or Regis Duchesne , another one of our coding machines.

Of course, there's a whole slew of others here "behind the curtain" and hopefully I'll be able to get them out here to have a chat and talk some about what we're doing.

As always, feedback is gladly appreciated. Feel free to note in the comments things you'd like to see us cover!

~Pete Kazanjy
VMware Fusion Product Marketing