Today, VMware announced that VMware Fusion 1.1 for Mac is now available.  The desktop virtualization platform for the Intel-based Mac is now at build 62573 for those of you keeping track at home.

VMware Fusion 1.1 has more than 25 enhancements, including:

• Support for Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"
• Access to even more Windows 3-D applications and games, with experimental support for DirectX 9.0 accelerated 3-D graphics (without "shaders")
• English, French, German, and Japanese versions all in the same download
• Improvements to Unity in VMware Fusion 1.1 that makes Microsoft Windows on the Mac even more seamless with:
  • Support for Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit editions
  • Support for Windows XP 64-bit edition
  • My Computer, My Document, My Network Places, Control Panel, Run, and Search are now available in the Applications menu, Dock applications menus, and the Launch Applications window
  • Option to show/hide the Windows taskbar and Startmenu in the VMware Fusion View menu
  • VMware Fusion Launch Applications window now appears only when you choose
  • Improved performance when resizing and dragging windows in Unity view
• Boot Camp integration even better with VMware Fusion 1.1:
  • Use Microsoft Vista Boot Camp partitions in VMware Fusion virtual machines
  • Automatic remount of Boot Camp partition after Boot Camp virtual machine is shut down
  • Improved support for detecting and preparing Boot Camp partitions for use as virtual machines
• Other improvements:
  • Ability to sync iPhone with Outlook in Windows virtual machines
  • Eject key now ejects the optical drive when attached to a virtual machine
  • VMware Shared Folders created with Windows Easy Install now defaults to Read-Only access of the Mac's home directory for maximum security>
  • Option to hide the VMware Fusion status bar, to take advantage of more screen real estate
  • Installation status and "out of date" status for VMware Tools is made more obvious on the status bar
  • Necessity to power off a virtual machine to modify virtual hardware setting is made more obvious

In addition to the improvements listed above, this release fixes numerous bugs to greatly improve the stability of VMware Fusion.

You can download VMware Fusion and obtain a serial number at www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/buyfusion.html.

You can download a Getting Started Guide for VMware Fusion at www.vmware.com/pdf/fusion_getting_started_11.pdf.

You can download virtual machines to use with VMware Fusion at www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/.