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Virtual PC vs VMWare

Asked by Zoom7000,

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Community Regular

SAXD

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If you intend on running all 3 VMs at once, you'll want 2+ GB. VMware Workstation is significantly better than Virtual PC. It has superior virtual networking options, snapshots, etc.

Not even a real comparison, VMware Workstation is just light years ahead of Virtual PC.

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Apprentice

Ctrl Alt Del

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I personally like VMware because their software works better with non-Microsoft operating systems. VMware Workstation has preset settings for Unix, Linux, Solaris, and of course Windows. Also, VMware Workstation 6.0 offers USB 2.0 connection for the guest OS.

You are definitely going to need more RAM. If you run a virtual machine with 256 MB of RAM, that's 256 MB of RAM that VMware will reserve for itself. By default VMware will do some memory swapping and swap virtual machine memory to the hard drive, but I turn this off to improve performance.

Lastly, are you going to run 3 virtual machines at the same time? Or only run 1 of the 3 at any time?

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Grand Master

Malisk

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IMHO, VMware even works better on Microsoft operating systems. The performance is simply better. And now with VMware 6, Vista 32/64 support is no longer just in an experimental stage, and also comes with multi-monitor and as above fast USB 2.0 support. :) So VMware is one of those products I think I recommend over competitors for pretty much any form of use. I have ran Ubuntu in Windows, Vista 32 in Vista 32 :), and last but not least OS X in Windows with it.

I recommend ~1.5 GB total when running one VM. That would give you 768 MB RAM per system. I hope you won't have to run all three at once! I think you'd need like 2-3 GB minimum for that to work reasonably well.

Edited by Jugalator
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Grand Master

Zoom7000

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I guess that's a resounding vote for VMWare. I was hoping everyone would say Virtual PC, because it's free! :p

Looks, like I'll need a RAM upgrade, and may only run 1 workstation, instead of 2

Thanks for the help.

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markwolfe Veteran

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I guess that's a resounding vote for VMWare. I was hoping everyone would say Virtual PC, because it's free! :p

VMWare Player is free. VMWare Server is free. VMWare Converter (I have never heard of this before visiting their website) is also free.

Do you need something that these don't cover?

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soldier1st

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vmware has better everything compared to the ms one,the only thing the ms one has that vmware has is that it is free and thats about it plus vmware has more choices so you are in total control and vmware is faster than the ms one.you need min 2GB if you plan to run vista inside it but you could get by with running 1 virtual machine and setting the vm app to use only ram and no swap improves performance of the virtual machine,you could run more than 1 but it would slow all down,vmware 6 is better than vmware 5,vmware can run anything it supports just fine with no problems.

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