Virtual Bridges, a leading provider of desktop and enterprise virtualization solutions for business, announced today the release of a major upgrade to its award-winning Win4Lin Desktop product and a specially priced edition for Ubuntu users.

Win4Lin Desktop addresses the needs of three distinct user segments. With Win4Lin Desktop, home and personal users enjoy unparalleled ease-of-use together with the broadest Windows application support available from desktop virtualization products. SMB users are able to lower costs by standardizing on Linux infrastructure while retaining their tried and true applications like Quickbooks and Filemaker. Enterprises and large organizations benefit not only from being able to run custom and vertical applications unmodified on Linux, but also from incredible easy management and corruption recovery.

Version 5 of Win4Lin Desktop is very fast. Virtualized desktops are very convenient and do not require a user to either reboot or use a second personal computer to run their remaining PC applications (often Intuit Quicken or QuickBooks) but users often complain “they’re just too slow”. Users make this comment whether they’re running Windows virtualized on Linux, OS X or Solaris and regardless of which vendor has developed the virtualized desktop. Win4Lin Desktop 5 answers this concern with blazing speed. Based on a massively modernized code base, Win4Lin Desktop 5 makes it possible to eliminate the need for rebooting or for maintaining a second PC box.

Because of the popularity, elegance and ubiquity of Ubuntu 8.04, Virtual Bridges has created a special Win4Lin Desktop 5 Ubuntu Edition, which they are offering for $29.99.

"With this announcement of the new release of Win4Lin, and a special edition aimed at Ubuntu users, Ubuntu is once more the choice to deliver class leading solutions" said Malcolm Yates, ISV Alliance Manager at Canonical. "Our users can reduce their management effort by maintaining existing applications and still benefit from moving to Ubuntu for all their new applications and services"

“Linux desktop computing has quickly become synonymous with Ubuntu,” said Dan Perlman, vice president of Marketing of Virtual Bridges. “We are proud to be able to serve the Ubuntu user community by making Win4Lin Desktop the best and easiest way to run Windows applications on Ubuntu.”

The Virtual Bridges Win4* brand professional-grade virtualization products help businesses extend their Open Source desktops without additional hardware costs. There are two Win4 Desktop products: Win4Lin Pro Desktop allowing users to run Windows applications on all major Linux Distributions, and Win4Solaris allowing users to run Windows applications on Sun Solaris and OpenSolaris.

Major Features of Win4Lin Desktop Products:

• Runs virtually all Windows applications from Microsoft, Intuit, Adobe, and most others, including in-house developed applications

• Compatible with the latest Linux desktops (Ubuntu, Fedora, Open SuSE, Mandriva, and more)

• A new Win4Lin Console for easy installation, backup, and management of Windows sessions

• Share files and documents between Windows and Linux applications

• Seamless printing from Windows

• Easy access to files on flash drives, memory sticks, and digital photo cameras from Windows

• Run Windows as a "desktop-in-a-box", full-screen, or as "floating applications"

• No need to understand complex virtual machine technology - Win4Lin does all the work for you

“As more and more users look for better desktop computing models, alternatives to Vista, the need to bridge their old familiar applications over in the process becomes essential. Win4Lin 5.0 offers the easiest, most robust way to run Windows applications on Linux on the market today” said Jim Curtin, president and CEO of Virtual Bridges. “Not only is Win4Lin 5.0 easy, secure and robust, it also now offers attractive GUI-based user management features such as back-up and restore.”

“Win4Lin 5.0 is a dramatic leap forward in several ways; easy-to-use GUI’s for all functions, including new back-up and restore capabilities, across the board performance improvements, 64-bit Linux support and a KVM-ready architecture are some of the new features,” said, Leo Reiter CTO and VP of Engineering. “Other new features such as the Win4LinPro Console, "My Host Computer" for easy access to USB/Firewire storage devices, and true "floating" applications, improves the most powerful Windows-on-Linux solution available today."

In a separate release, Virtual Bridges has announced Win4Solaris Desktop 5, available immediately. Both products are based on the same rock-solid code base.

Win4Lin Desktop was picked as the winner in a LinuxWorld Magazine face-off review against VMware Workstation™ and was the winner of the prestigious LinuxWorld Expo Award for Best Enterprise Integration Product.

Pricing and Availability

Win4Lin Desktop 5 is available immediately. Win4Lin Desktop is being offered to users in two editions, Win4Lin Desktop 5 Ubuntu Edition and Win4Lin Desktop 5 Pro Edition. It is a no-cost update for Win4Lin Pro 4.5 users and is available from http://www.vbridges.com/download-update-win4lin/

To buy Win4Lin Desktop 5 now, please visit http://win4lin.com/buydesktop/

Win4Solaris Desktop 5 is also available immediately. Win4Solaris Desktop is being offered to users, also, in two editions; Win4Solaris Desktop 5 Home Edition and Win4Solaris Desktop 5 Pro Edition. It is a no-cost update for all Win4Solaris users and is available from http://www.vbridges.com/download-update-win4solaris/

To buy Win4Solaris Desktop 5 now, please visit http://win4solaris.com/buydesktop/