You know my take here! Anyway, I've been using VMWare for quite a long time, in fact I have a separate development box for each client allowing me to keep a client-specific machine. Backing up my machine is cake too. Just copy the VM directory to another machine. This also enables me to work on a desktop at the office and move the machine to my laptop when on site.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with VirtualPC and I have to say, I'm impressed. I do get some odd graphics behavior (VMWare seems to do a better job with that) and for the moment my earlier version of VMWare runs a bit faster, at least it seems so. Still, VirtualPC was easy to get going, runs smoothly and it's free - I'm all about free.

NOTE: To get good performance is going to require some memory and I would recommend a minimum of 2MB. I can run several instances of VMWare on my desktop with no noticable performance drop - my laptop is another story.

-- x

I used VMWare 5 for a while and when VirtualPC2007 came out I switched. It had a lot of nice features that made it much more friendly to use in a dual monitor situation. For instance VMWare 5, full screen on one monitor, traps your mouse until you de-full-screen it, while Virtual PC 2007 lets you drag your mouse from screen to screen.

However, I recently switched back to VMWare after having tried the trial version of VMWare 6. VMWare 6 not only solved that problem, but it now supports dual monitors, so I can full screen across both of them. VMWare 6 has a lot of other nice features that make it head and shoulders above VirtualPC again.

VMare is faster than Virtual PC as well. I have an Intel, Core 2 quad with four GB of Ram and a high-end, dual DVI video card; and can't really tell the difference in speed from my host OS when in a full-screen VMWare machine, and I'm doing normal development stuff. Compiling, running and jitting a complex ASP.net project is terribly time consuming on either the host OS or on the VM. Smaller projects also are a snap on both.

I currently have Virtual PC's for a few different clients. One in VMWare and the others in Virtual PC. I enjoy using the VMWare one much more than the VirtualPC ones, but just haven't taken the time to convert them to VMWare, which I understand is an easy process.

One thing about VMWare that I am very disappointed in is the fact that they pulled out the Linux version and started selling it as a separate product. Effectively doubling your cost if you want to use linux AND windows as host operating systems. Not that you will EVER want to use Linux as a host os. ;o)

Speaking of Linux (in case anyone reading this cares.), it is almost impossible to install Linux on a VirtualPC VM. There is no support for Linux extensions on Virtual PC and most distributions won't install easily on the Windows specific hardware emulation in VMWare. Installing Linux on a VMWare 6 machine is a breeze and all VMWare images will run beautifully in the Linux-based VMWare player. Regardless of whether they were created on a Linux host.

All things considered, the $189 price tag for a new VMWare license is cheap. Even compared to the "free" Virtual PC.

Owners of older versions of VMWare can upgrade to VMWare 6 for $99.

--
Phillip H. Blanton

I just wanted to re-emphasize and agree with X, that I don't really notice any speed penalty on my VMWare machines on my heavy-duty desktop. VMWare is faster than Virtual PC and VMWare 6 is faster than VMWare 5.

I do notice a performance penalty when running a virtual machine on my laptop though (Dell XPS Gen 2). Not so bad as to render the VM unusable, but noticible nonetheless.

By the way, a virtual machine (VirtualPC or VMWare) always runs faster when full-screen than it does when windowed. I presume that this is because the video card can dedicate itself to the single operating system being displayed; which reminds me...

Equally important as memory and fast hard drives, I highly recommend getting the best video card with as much memory as you can afford (I don't imagine that this is an issue with your PC). My video card is a PCIE 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro IceQ3 that I paid about $270 for. Not the fastest or most cutting edge, but lots of bang for the buck.

Another thing I just remembered about Virtual PC, is that the max resolution that it supports is 1440 x 900. Native resolution on my new monitors is 1680 x 1050 and Virtual PC leaves black borders around the sides in full-screen mode. I searched and searched for a fix, but all posts I could find indicate that VPC just won't go above 1440x900.

VMWare 6 goes borderless full-screen with no hassle. Press ctrl + alt + enter, VMWare detects the current resolution and adjusts accordingly. Sweet. On VMWare 5 you had to edit the registry to add the specific resolution to the system. VMWare 6 just auto detects and works.

That's all I can think of right now.

Lino --

I think your vision of a virtual machine's speed needs updating. ;-)

We use VMWare's ESX server here extensively, and I don't notice much if any speed problems. Sometimes I forget I'm on a VM when using them.

Our servers have huge drives and tons of memory. That seems to be the trick -- lots of memory. The servers are used fairly regularly, but they seem to hold up well.

Using VMWare locally is just like having two computers in one. I've never noticed any performance problems.

Nick

Cool! Thanks Phillip and Nick. I appreciate the help on this. I will give them both a try for the next 2 weeks and report back here of the findings. It looks like VMWare might still be the choice though.
Miss you guys!

Tried both. VmWare Player is faster and easy to use.
The VmWare Server is also free and you can use that on a fast server and access it using their VNC type client that you can download with the server.

The advantage of the server is that you can create your virtual machines.
If you only downloaded the player you can use EasyVMX.com to create the virtual machine for you.
-IB