Today VMware released the new 16958 build, labelled Release Candidate 1.
With this new phase VMware re-introduce the brand new, cool feature, introduced in beta1 and dropped in beta2, called VMware Player:
VMware Player is a utility that opens and plays VMware Workstation 4 and Workstation 5 virtual machines. On Windows hosts, the player also opens and plays Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery system images. VMware Player makes your VMware virtual machines accessible to colleagues, partners, customers, and clients who do not own VMware products.
The VMware Player is probably one of the most wanted feature by every VMware customer: it will be able to run a single, non-editable VM at a time, without installing all Workstation product.
This new opportunity will be mostly interesting for any salesman or teacher or conference speaker in need of a fast and non-invasive way to run VMs.
The VMware Player could also be the perfect companion of the new USB keys with U3 platform, covered in a previous post.
The build is still available for whole public. Download it here: http://www.vmware.com/programs/1/wkst5beta.do