VMWare, Virtual PC or Virtualbox?

Soldato
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Does anyone have experience of using any of the above? Is the performance of say XP running in a virtual machine comparable to that of running it directly on a system?
 
VMware fan here, using the new Workstation v7 gives full Aero graphics as well unlike the previous versions.
 
I use Virtual PC and the performance is fine. CPU and memory are essentially the same as the host system. Hard disk access is a little slower because of the virtual harddrive.
 
virtulabox would be my choice

is it just me or are there a lot of threads lately asking this exact question?
 
Virtualbox with the "guest additions" add-on. Full screen on my PC sometimes I forget I'm in a VM (basic work tasks, no games obviously)
 
VMware Workstation = the best but £90

Sun Virtualbox = nearly as good as VM. Workstation but not = FREE!! :D

Virtual PC = not very good but worth a bash its free too.
 
vmware player 3 is the free alternative to workstation. it has all the aero/gpu acceleration/drag & drop stuff. the average user isn't going to notice the difference between the 2. my only beef with it is the ugly as sin "skin" they use for the window which ignores the windows theme you use.
 
Virtualbox seems ok, been using it daily for the last few weeks, only problem is it keeps running out of virtual memory so 192mb probably isn't enough...

Also I've had the occasional issue where using my main pc some of the keys end up becoming shortcuts after using VB, so typing a sentence ends up opening a load of applications. Anyone else have this?
 
Also I've had the occasional issue where using my main pc some of the keys end up becoming shortcuts after using VB, so typing a sentence ends up opening a load of applications. Anyone else have this?

Yes, I must admit that does my nut in and requires a reboot (too lazy to work out the problem)
 
Hi,

Using both of these (on a linux host) and both are very good. Would say that Virtualbox is very good for a 'free' product when compared to VMWorkstation however workstation has better snapshot and networking support.

Virtualisation will have an effect on the performance of the guest OS however this is mitigated somewhat if you have dual or quad core cpu's. I run many test environments within workstation and have noticed very large performance gains when moving from e6600 to q9550 (and 8Gb memory and RAID10 array :D)

Go for Virtualbox and see how that works for you and you can then decide if you need to stump up for VMWorkstation's features. Think that VMplayer does not allow you to create vm's where as Virtualbox does.

What's virtual pc? :rolleyes:
 
Currently using Virtual PC, it's slow.

Can Virtualbox cope with Aero graphics now? I found the gfx acceleration even with the additions installed was woeful.
 
Think that VMplayer does not allow you to create vm's where as Virtualbox does.

...then you're not aware of the new version of vmware player. that allows the creation/editing of virtual machines using the same interface/options as workstation. you don't get the virtual network editor, snapshot tools, recording and such like but it's not really an issue. :)

What's virtual pc? :rolleyes:

damned straight. :D
 
I found the gfx acceleration even with the additions installed was woeful.

did you do it properly? installing additions in safe mode?

anyway, if you want aero then you'll need to use vmware. you can get a 30 day trial of workstation or a vmware player which is totally free. it just requires you create an account on the vmware website.
 
VM Player 3.0 looks good. Can you get it without going through that long winded, tedious and irrelevant registration? Cheers btw.
 
well the installer doesn't require any key/activation so if you can find a copy.....

but surely you have a spam mail account for registering such stuff. and it only takes a minute or 2 to fill out the details.
 
Sure, OK. Just I don't really have a business or a business phone, but guess what, Mr J.Bloggs does.

OK, done. I'll give it a go tomorrow.
 
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