VMware Converter ... out of beta and still free!

Gotta love VMware for having killer products that are free.  First VMware Server ... now VMware Converter.  Still haven't played with virtualization yet?  Now you really have no excuse :-)

VMware Announces Availability of VMware Converter 3 - Enterprise and Free Starter Editions

Newest Release of Migration Tool Speeds Move to Virtual World

PALO ALTO, Calif., January 29, 2007 — VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced the general availability of the Enterprise and Starter editions of VMware Converter 3, the newest release of its migration tool.   

“Customers are accelerating their migration from physical systems to a virtualized infrastructure, so the ability to perform large-scale conversions is important to the thousands of VMware customers who are standardizing on VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of product marketing and solutions at VMware. “As the only freely available conversion tool on the market today, VMware Converter Starter also offers customers new to virtualization a simple path toward virtualizing their infrastructure.”

VMware Converter 3 automates the Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) and Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V) conversion process for creating VMware virtual machines from physical machines, other virtual machine formats or third-party image formats. The VMware Converter Starter edition enables one conversion at a time and is free of charge.  The VMware Converter Enterprise edition enables multiple concurrent conversions and is available at no additional cost to VMware customers who have current support and subscription contracts for VMware VirtualCenter Management Server.  [more]