Users of Workstation Player 12, Workstation 10 and Workstation 11 can upgrade to Workstation Pro 12 for $149.99. Users of Player 6 Plus and Player Pro 7 can upgrade to Workstation Player 12 for $79.99. ° Customizable UI views with tabs, library, thumbnails and Aero Peek.įor new users Workstation 12 Pro costs US$249.99 (it comes with $600 of vCloud Air credit to use for up to six months) and Workstation Player costs $149.99. ° The ability to connect to vSphere and vCloud Air ° The ability to create restricted and expiring VMs However, Workstation 12 Pro has these features that Player 12 doesn’t: They also have support for many Linux distributions. Workstation Pro 12 and Workstation Player 12 you run Windows 10, Windows 7 or Windows XP in a VM. ° Respect left-handing mouse setting on Windows hot. ° Improved standard installer (it works better with deployment tools) ° Addition of USB 3.0 support to Windows 7 virtual machines ° Echo cancellation for voice and video call with Microsoft Lync and Skype ° Addition of NAT network configuration in Virtual Network Editor on Linux hosts ° Improved vCloud Air integration (Workstation Pro on Windows only) ° Support virtual monitors with different dpi settings ° Auto suspend virtual machines upon host shutdown All this adds up to 3x faster suspend/resume encrypted VMs and 15% faster 3D benchmarks, according to the folks at VMware. It’s also ready for the latest hardware, including 4K UHD displays. Workstation Pro 12’s enhanced graphics engine supports DirectX 10, OpenGL 3.3 and scores well when tested on Futuremark 3DMARK. It supports up to 16 virtual CPUs, up to 64GB of RAM, up to 8TB disks, and up to 2GB of video per virtual machine.
The target audience for Workstation Pro is software engineers/developers quality assurance teams, IT administrators, technical sales teams, and teachers/trainers. Workstation Player is for less technical users than those of Workstation Pro, including IT administrators, teachers and trainers. It’s really more about developing and testing virtual machines with different versions of Windows or Linux on one platform. Workstation Pro is akin to what VMware is doing with Fusion Pro. The app formerly known as Player Pro now goes by the moniker of Workstation Player. The change was done to reduce confusion. The former Workstation is now dubbed Workstation Pro. If you’re a former Workstation user, you should note some naming changes. On the most basic level, Workstation is to a PC what Fusion is to a Mac (see our separate article on the upgrade of VMware Fusion 8 being released). VMware (has updated WorkStation and Workstation Pro to version 12.