VMware Ships Free Virtual Machine App

VMware on Wednesday introduced VMware Player, a free tool that enables users to run virtual machines on a Linux or Windows PC. The company says that the program would be ideal for those beta testing software, or evaluating pre-built application environments. The release of the Player comes during VMworld, a yearly convention held by the company focusing on virtualized computing.

While VMware Player cannot create virtual machines like the company's Workstation software, it does offer a few pre-built applications that can be downloaded from VMware. VMware Player is also compatible with machines created in Microsoft's Virtual PC and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats. Download VMware Player 1.0 from FileForum.