In a move that more than likely should’ve caused a black hole or a rift in time, finally got the (yesterday) released Microsoft Windows 8 Developer’s Build to work on Apple OS X 10.7 via VMWare Fusion. The kicker was that VMWare Fusion 3.1.3 wouldn’t work; luckily enough, VMWare Fusion saw fit to releasing their $49.99 update to VMWare Fusion 4.0.1 today, one day after Windows 8 was made available for download and guess what?

It works!

Even though Microsoft stated that Windows 8 will work on an Intel Atom with only 1gb of RAM, I truly suggest giving it way more RAM than that. And the final install of everything is a shade under 7.5gb in total, with the Windows folder being around 4.93gb of space used. Off the bat, Internet Explorer 10 is included in the install. The new Start Menu is what looks like the Windows Phone 7 interface of oddly shaped squares that are somewhat interlocked together. But the regular, “looks like Windows 7″ desktop is still in there.

I’ll definitely have to give this a more in-depth look in a bit. But so far, this is only adding to my anticipation for Microsoft Windows 8.

[ Links: MSDN Windows 8 Developer Edition Downloads, VMWare Fusion 4.0 ]

In a move that is equal parts “about time” and “how in the heck will they do it”, VMware has announced that they are working on mobile OS virtualization for the smartphones that are always growing in processing power and capabilities.

VMware has flagged smartphones as the next platform in the evolution of virtualization, but at least one major competitor, Microsoft, says that it sees no demand for the technology.

Speaking to Computerworld, Srinivas Krishnamurti, VMware’s head of mobile phone virtualisation said the company’s vision for virtualization on smartphones went beyond the basic dual-boot prototypes currently in development to one that ran both a private and work operating system and profile at the same time.

“We don’t think dual booting will be good enough – we’ll allow you to run both profiles at the same time and be able to switch between them by clicking a button,” he said. “You’ll be able to get and make calls in either profile – work or home – as they will both be live at any given point in time.”

Even though the example(s) show Microsoft WinMo and Android, if down the road it means that I can run Maemo 5/6 on the Nokia N900 and run an instance of Mobile OS X – the OS that’s on the iPhone – or Google Android or even Microsoft WinMo… I’ve found a project that would allow me to use different browsers, connectivity, or features that aren’t always on my phone of choice. Can’t wait to see what happens with this. No announcement on availability.

[ Links: Computer World Australia, VMware ]

Guess what I got running via VMWare Fusion? If you guessed the recently shown off Google Chrome OS you’d be right. So far, it feels a bit unoptimized and slow but I’m only giving it only 512mb of RAM, 1 virtual processor on my Mac Mini running VMWare Fusion 2.06. I’ll retry in a bit once I’ve installed VMWare 3.0. Make sure that you use bridged and not NAT for your networking setup otherwise you’ll not be able to login.

This build of the Chrome OS is running 4.0.253.0 (32516). And speaking of logins, at the login screen (seen below) you input your Gmail login and password in order to login.

To get your download running, you will need a couple of things. If you have one of the VMWare [ site here ] applications, on the Mac it’s VMWare Fusion which has recently been upgraded to version 3.0, that’s a good start. Some people have used VirtualBox, which is free, and I have on the PC, but have yet to attempt. Then you will need to head over to via gdgt.com [ site here ] and download the Google Chrome OS VMWare Image.

You will need a login to their site, which is free, painless and takes like 1 minute to obtain a login.

Helpful tips, if you download it:
1.) To use the vmdk file, open VMware and create a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an “existing virtual disk.” (In VMware Fusion, this is the last option below, “use operating system disk” and “use OS disc image file.”)
2.) Make sure your VM is set to use bridged networking, rather than NAT.
3.) The username and password to login to Chrome OS / Chromium OS is your google account!

Alternatively, if you don’t have VMware, some users have had luck getting this image to run using VirtualBox, which is a free cross-platform (Windows / Mac / Linux) virtual machine created by Sun Microsystem.

Again, I haven’t tried the VirtualBox method yet, but might try it out on my main Windows PC later today. So far, it’s quirky, has twice randomly stopped on me, but for something that’s coming out next year, I could easily see using this on my OQO 01+ as a web only way to access the web and get to the internet when I’m mobile and want access to a full-blown Flash player and a keyboard. Can’t wait for the final release in the second half of 2010.

[ gdgt ] [ VirtualBox ] [ VMWare ] [ Related: Chrome OS as Open Source Project ]