Really quick virtual machine question

liamcrane · 9 Dec 2010 at 20:15

Evening all,

Im looking to have a play around with a virtual machine, i am currently studying for my a+ and just wanna have a play around with no fear of doing any damage to my host OS windows 7. I think i have an old xp license that i dont use anymore so i will use that but my main question is what do people reccomend as the best free virtual machine for what i need?

I have heard virtual box is meant to be fairly good just would like a few opinions

many thanks

tntcoder · 9 Dec 2010 at 20:41

liamcrane said:
Evening all,

Im looking to have a play around with a virtual machine, i am currently studying for my a+ and just wanna have a play around with no fear of doing any damage to my host OS windows 7. I think i have an old xp license that i dont use anymore so i will use that but my main question is what do people reccomend as the best free virtual machine for what i need?

I have heard virtual box is meant to be fairly good just would like a few opinions

many thanks

You won't go wrong with VirtualBox

Skeeter · 9 Dec 2010 at 21:15

tntcoder said:
You won't go wrong with VirtualBox

Cosimo · 9 Dec 2010 at 22:53

VMware Player is also very good:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

If you have Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate then you have access to a free Microsoft XP Virtual machine:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/

You may find that this is sufficient for your needs.

CaptainCrash · 10 Dec 2010 at 08:22

VMware Player is decent and will be sufficient for many people, but unlike VirtualBox it won't do snapshots (you'll need the full VMware Workstation for that). I suppose you could just back up the installed guest OS and restore it if the aforementioned "playing around" breaks something, but the ability to roll back to a previous point with a couple of clicks is much more convenient.