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VirtualPC 2004 Versus VMWare 4.5?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the killer-attack-robots dept.

BackNBlack writes "Ars Technica has an interesting comparison shootout between Microsoft's VirtualPC 2004 and VMWare Workstation 4.5. Has VirtualPC improved since Microsoft bought it from Connectix? It looks as though VMWare is really the choice of those who can afford it. I'm also a little surprised that Microsoft is not as compatible as it could be, given the competition."

1 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a second.... by Zetta+Matrix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this an apples and oranges comparison? (Not that anyone cares, necessarily...)

    IIRC, VirtualPC is essentially an emulator. VMWare is actually a virtualization layer that only emulates the hardware interfaces, but the non-privileged application code can run directly on the CPU like it would "natively".

    This by itself should explain the speed differences, as well as why VMWare requires x86 hardware to run Windows, while VirtualPC can run on a Mac (which would be impossible given VMWare's design).

    I'm surprised that no one is mentioning this.