New Feature Summary
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Key new features and capabilities in VMware Workstation 5.5 Release Candidate:

* Support for 64-bit guest operating systems
* Experimental support for 2-way Virtual SMP
* New support for select host and guest operating systems and hardware - 32 and 64 bit
* Ability to open and convert Microsoft VMs or Norton Ghost 9 images
* Toolbar customization capabilities
* New wireless networking capabilities for Linux hosts
* Improved autodetect makes it easier to configure devices for virtual machines
* Enhancements to the command line interface

New Feature Detail
Key new features in VMware Workstation 5.5 Beta:

Support for 64-bit guest operating systems
Users can now run select 64-bit operating systems in virtual machines. This gives users additional freedom and flexibility to work with the operating systems that best suit their needs, including the ability to run 32- and 64-bit operating systems simultaneously on the same physical machine. Supported 64-bit guest operating systems include select Microsoft Windows, Red Hat, SUSE, and FreeBSD distributions. This 64-bit guest capability is fully supported on select Opteron and Athlon processors from AMD, and experimentally supported on Intel VT-enabled processors. A free utility that checks for supported processors is available as part of the download process. Read the details on supported 64-bit guest operating systems and required processors.

Experimental support for 2-way Virtual SMP
Users can now assign up to two virtual processors to a virtual machine. This lets users create more realistic and powerful development and testing environments when working with multi-threaded, resource-intensive software. This capability is available for all supported configurations of 32-bit and 64-bit host and guest operating systems running on multi-processor host machines, including dual-core and hyper-threaded, uni-processor machines.

New support for select host & guest operating systems and hardware - 32 and 64 bit
Workstation 5.5 offers new host and guest operating system support for the latest distributions from Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE, Sun Solaris x86, FreeBSD and more. Workstation 5.5 also offers support for new processors from Intel and AMD. Read the details on supported operating systems and processors.

Seamlessly open and convert Microsoft virtual machines or Norton Ghost 9 images
Via the Workstation user interface, users can now easily:

* Open Microsoft virtual machines and Norton Ghost 9 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.
* Convert Microsoft virtual machines and Norton Ghost 9 images into complete, full VMware virtual machines. The initial virtual machine is left untouched.

These capabilities make it easier for individuals working in a multi-vendor environment to use VMware Workstation to standardize on the VMware platform, or to reuse their libraries of physical machine images when building or deploying a virtual infrastructure.

Toolbar customization capabilities
Workstation 5.5 allows users to customize the toolbar icons by simply right-clicking on any of the icons. Users can now easily organize the toolbar to best fit their needs.

New wireless networking capabilities for Linux hosts
For Linux hosts, Workstation 5.5 now supports wireless Ethernet adapters used in bridged networking, letting users connect virtual machines to wireless networks. Support for wireless Ethernet adapters is already present for Workstation on Windows hosts.

Improved autodetect makes it easier to configure devices for virtual machines
Workstation 5.5 extends existing autodetect support for CD-ROM drives to other hardware devices. You can now set a virtual machine to also automatically detect floppy drives, sound adaptors, and parallel and serial ports.

Enhancements to the command line interface
Workstation 5.5 features new enhancements to the command line interface (vmrun) that let users manage snapshots of virtual machines. With vmrun commands, users can now quickly create, delete, list, and go to specific snapshots