Beginning 7-28-08, VMWare is giving away their ESXi server virtualization software (retail $495) , to combat MS market moves into that space. (Caveat: I love VMWare Fusion, which I use to effortlessly (and simultaneously) run XP and Linux on my MacBook).  I firmly believe that any company that can challenge the Microsoft monopoly deserves support in this free enterprise world.  As we all know, competition encourages excellence. And if VMWare has a great product, that doesn't hurt either.

Slash dot notes: "VMware's bare-metal hypervisor is available for free starting today. ESXi, which can either be installed or run from an embedded device available in certain servers, has a 32MB footprint and gives small businesses an easy way to get into the virtualization world, with easy upgrade paths to enterprise-level features such as (H)igh (A)vailability and (D)istributed (R)esource (S)cheduler. ESXi runs on most any hardware with a server-class disk controller, and previously retailed for $495. VMware is obviously shooting to prevent Microsoft's Hyper-V technology from gaining a foothold in the marketplace."

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