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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."

5 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. VMware runs on linux by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For me, that is all that matters.

  2. compatible with Windows is all MS really cares for by Locutus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that comment about compatibility in the lead-in kinda surprised me. After all, didn't they purchase VirtualPC because server consolidation was hurting Windows Server sales? They made tons of money when people realized they needed a seperate BOX for each server process run on Windows( they sold more OS licenses ) but now the cats out of the bag and TCO cost are killing them.

    So, why would Microsoft care about anything but how this works on Windows and targetted apps? They don't. IMHO.

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  3. Re:Why not integrate it into Windows ? by riscthis · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They're going to wait for Longhorn, though, as being able to run other operating systems from within Windows would be a major coup for them. There'd be no reason for people to install over it...People interested in trying other operating systems will simply install inside the VM, and most probably won't get around to wiping off the host OS.

    On the other hand, if Microsoft software becomes tied to the hardware tightly enough, the fact that users can run other operating systems from within Windows would be a significant defense for the next time they wind up in court on charges of antitrust or the like.

    Not only that, but they can run previous versions of Windows -- or at least some of the sub-systems -- under Longhorn, thereby allowing backwards compatibility without having to design it directly into Longhorn's own APIs. (Like Apple did when they went to OS X, I believe).

    They could also the technology for sandboxing "untrusted" applications and isolate them from the main system.
  4. Re:What I would really like to see... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In other words, you need cygwin. Run the cygwin installer from cygwin.com and set the "X11" part to "install", go into editors and turn off all the emacs packages :) and then click install. Good luck finding a fast mirror, it is possible however. Once you have cygwin installed, run a cygwin shell to set up your environment. Now create a shortcut which runs the following:

    C:\CYGWIN\usr\X11R6\bin\run.exe XWin.exe -multiwindow -clipboard

    This runs the X server in a rootless mode that does not require a window manager (Windows is your window manager - this instructs the X server to in turn instruct windows to draw decorations around your X client windows) and which performs clipboard integration. There are some other switches you can set, see man XWin for more information. In particular people with multiple displays will want to set another switch to support that, and there is also a switch to specify that all clipboard contents should be 8 bit (no unicode support.) It's not the fastest nor the best* X server out there, but it certainly does the job. If you are going to be running X clients locally, which you probably will if you install cygwin, you will want to add "DISPLAY=localhost:0" to your environment.

    * Actually, cygwin's X server might have recently become the best X server around. It uses directdraw to draw windows, it properly handles the clipboard now which X-Win32 still can't seem to get right after an update they explicitly claimed would solve my clipboard problem, and it uses standard X tools like xhost for management.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. ESX by jmoen · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I find VMWare quite superior to VPC any day. We now run 25 virtual servers (win2k3/2k and linux) on two IBM X445 boxes with the latest VMWare ESX version connected to a IBM Fastt SAN and it works just greate. I've tried VPC several times but it just don't "scale" the way VMWare do today, also since the management OS is linux with a very rich perl API available it's easy to work with if you're into that. I don't find VMWare ESX Server to be that expensive at all, with SMP support (on the virtual client) it's like $5000 or something.


    The only thing that has been a problem so far is getting the VMWare client utils installed if the virtual OS is running the 2.6.x kernel.