VMWare Inc. recently announced the availability of WMWare Workstation 6.0, which brings new features as Windows Vista support, USB 2.0 and multiple displays monitors support.

Although virtualization is a technology introduced more than 8 years ago, few have heard of it and even fewer are using it on a regular base (although the term is even older, dating back from the 1960s). Currently, VMWare’s Workstation offers virtualization for operating systems like Windows (XP or Vista), Linux, Free BSD, NetWare or Solaris x86.

Among the novelties introduced in VMWare Workstation 6 are the industry-first support for up to 10 network interface cards and experimental support for two-way Virtual SMP. Besides that, VMW Workstation 6 also offers administrators the option of recording the execution of a virtual machine, including all inputs, outputs and decisions made along the way. Thus, the feedback the virtual machine is offering can be traced back and forth, ensuring that the responses are always those expected by the administrator and that inherent bugs can be reproduced and solved.

VMware Workstation 6 is also the first virtualization platform to allow execution of paravirtualized guest operating systems that implement the VMI interface.

One other interesting feature introduced in the latest version of VMW’s product is the ability to run virtual machines in the background without actually running the VMware Workstation user interface, which clears space and offers an uncluttered user experience.

“This feature-packed release of VMware Workstation demonstrates our commitment to delivering cutting-edge products that help enable users to maximize the benefit of virtualization on the desktop,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. “VMware Workstation 6 raises the bar significantly for desktop virtualization—it is a must-have product and the only choice for serious desktop virtualization users.”

VMW WS 6.0 will be available for both Windows and Linux OS at a price of $189.