This week the Insider is becoming more and more obsessed with virtual machines. This has nothing to do with rumours that someone has come up with a newspaper publishing system that can automatically insert and caption Amy Winehouse pictures without any human intervention, so saving hacks hours of drudgery a week, and rather a lot to do with VMware, which will soon be hosting its VMworld show in the good ol' U S of A.

If you can't be there, you should really, really, really read our preview on the event, which is sure to host more releases than a busy maternity ward.

More news than all that happened as well, the best of which you can find collated on our web site, and linked to from here.

We do the grubby work, so you don’t have to.

Big news
Virtualisation advances set VMworld buzzing
A number of firms are set to make significant announcements at the forthcoming VMworld event, and in the run up to it. Martin Veitch has crawled all over the parties involved and come up with a lot of information about what to expect. Amazingly, given his propensity for crawling on things, none of the firms issued a restraining order either. Which is nice.

More news
Vodafone 3G steps up a gear
Vodafone has announced the devices that it will use to offer its customers high-speed 3G telecoms services under the HSUPA banner. The devices come out on Monday, and the service will start later this year. So, if you buy a device now, make sure you don't put it anywhere you won't be able to find it when that time comes round.

More, more news
Green scheme may cut power bills
PC power management firm Verdiem is apparently in talks with several UK utility firms. If the talks come to fruition IT managers could benefit from much cheaper electricity bills. Something that we could all do with in the run up to Christmas – those office discos can use up a lot of juice, you know.

Podcast:
This week Phil Muncaster talks to Daniel Robinson about how to keep slugs off your vegetable patch, Martin Veitch gives advice on raising horses, and – in actuality – Intel's new vPro platform gets discussed.

Comment:
Kewney: No Segway for me
Signor Kewney is talking about what adverts are on telly at the moment. We don't pay you to be Chris Tarrant you know. By the way, can we get a mini cab to Elephant?

Business Green blog
Apparently, even though it makes a lot of sense for firms to pay green taxes very few of them do. what's that other certainty in life? Ah, yeah. Death.

Lem Bingley blog
Lem has been playing around with something called Tafiti. Remember this Lem, just cos Microsoft made it, doesn’t make it right.

Sneak blog
This week Sneak is annoyed by space, is put off his stroke by elderly Chinese police people – or something, and is considering spending money on Lego. Please, someone sack him.