Update: Blog post from one of the developers with his favorite features
VMware Workstation 8 is now shipping and it’s got a lot of slick features like the ability to connect to an ESX/i server or remote Workstation PCs or Cloud providers to manage the VMs on those sources. You can also upload VMs from Workstation to an ESX/i server tho the only way to bring it back is to leverage Converter (which you can do from within Workstation).
There is also a new Share feature where VMs will be moved to a folder with proper permissions and then be controlled from a remote desktop with another copy of Workstation.
Best new feature: Nested 64-bit VMs!
“Workstation 8 is so powerful you can even run 64-bit virtual machines on vSphere which itself is running in a Workstation 8 virtual machine.”
Most of the features from previous version are still there like quick screen captures, movie captures, VNC to the VMs, encryption of VMs, plenty of local custom network features but note that teaming has been removed and team setting will be sort-of migrated.
Not bad for $199/full or $99/upgrade. I believe you get a discount for having VMUG Advantage and should eventually get a free copy for VCP5 (right now you still get Workstation7)
One other note: Workstation8 uses the same virtual hardware for VMs as ESXi 5 – they finally got in sync!