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VMware Workstation vs. VirtualBox vs. Parallels
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox — among the best free open source software available for Windows — out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O. 'There's some genuine innovation going on, especially in the areas of hardware support and application compatibility,' Kennedy writes. 'All support 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux hosts and guests, and all have added compelling new VM management capabilities, ranging from automated snapshots to live VM migration.'"
If cost is an issue why do these reviews forget the free VMWare Server it does most everything most users would need at no cost vs workstation
but crawled onto second place for being free. I think cost should be kept out of reviews, instead tell what you think of the product - as it is - then the reader can decide for himself if the price is worth the extras.
They call VMware Workstation at $189 "expensive".
It's a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the hardware needed to run any of these products well.
They say a max of 4 virtual CPU in the review but they FAIL to mention that each of these CPU can have 4 cores, so really it supports 16 virtual processors.
These two inaccuracies also just happen to be the only two "Cons" that they assign to VMware.
If you actually bother to boot up and try VirtualBox you will find it very buggy compared to VMware, to the point of being not very usable. I spent several days trying to get VirtualBox to work for me but there were just too many problems.
VirtualBox rules. XP on VMWare barely ran while the same Win XP install on VirtualBox is working well.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Whether it meets some arbitrary definition of "freedom" shouldn't affect its score. If "freedom" is a desirable feature for certain users, they can certainly weigh that appropriately themselves.
VMWare assumes the *entire* point of your system is to run VMWare. Therefore, *everything* must take a back seat to it.
Try looking at the RPM. It's *hideous*... just a wrapper around the VMWare installer script - which means you end up with a crapload of files that RPM doesn't recognize as belonging to the VMWare package (or *any* package, for that matter.)
Then you have the VMWare installer for "other" operating systems... it asks you where it should install itself.. so I say "/usr/local/vmware" - but it decides that it *also* needs to install stuff in /usr/share and doesn't tell you about it.
Contrast with VirtualBox, which assumes that you system is, you know, your system.. and that you *might* want to use it to run other software, so it should play nicely and not try to take everything over.
VMWare is just a huge stinking pile of crap.
Oops I was wrong about the max number of processors, it really is 4, I just tried it.
it works well with USB devices. I use it to program Lego Mindostorms, and for Midi (to USB) keyboard input and some thumb drives.
it will mount any folder on my mac disk either permenantly or temporarily (these show us as X: or Y: or whatever). What's mildly annoying is that this is 2 step process: first you tell the VM to "add the drive" then you have to use a windows "run" command "net use x: " to tell windows about it. the second step seems strange to me, but you only do it one time.
I've had three things I could not figure out.
I never was able to get a windows media player to mount in media player mode so I could use windows DRM protected WMA files on it and manage it from within windows media player 11. Instead it only will mount as a thumb drive.
I was not able to get a virtual CD device to mount an iso image or burn an iso image (as a work around for getting the WMA files in a format I could play).
It will not burn a CD or DVD.
also I never figured out how to add my Samsung C310 printer to it or my HP multifunction printer to it. it does see them, it just never finds the drivers. However I'm pretty certain this is a windows driver problem and nothing to do with the VM.
I don't game so open GL means squat to me.
No mention of Citrix's XenDesktop? XenApp is far superior to normal Terminal Services and the ICA protocol is pretty damn impressive. Add in their "HDX" technology and Provisioning Server and I am scratching my head as to why the author left them out.
"VMWare assumes the *entire* point of your system is to run VMWare"
Damned straight! Why else would I buy a machine with 8 cores and 32 Gb RAM?
"Try looking at the RPM"
What RPM? VMware Workstation 7 does not ship as an RPM any more. You are behind on the times.
"Contrast with VirtualBox"
Yes I did. They BOTH install lots of strange stuff on your machine. I did not see much difference.
The big difference I found is that VMware has sufficient quality for me to do my work. VirtualBox is so buggy that I cannot do my job with it. Believe me, I tried.
VirtualBox is also great for network labs as you can bind physical NICs to seperate virtual machines. You can't do that with any others until you start getting into ESX territory afaik.
As an example you can run Checkpoint or Olive on it and link it in with Dynamips, get an entire enterprise network running on your desktop. Maybe not everyones idea of fun but a comparable hardware lab setup would run to many thousands of pounds.
I'd second your comments about the Atom too, it runs XP blazingly fast.
VirtualBox is fine for what it is, but I don't have the time to struggle with it.
"some really far out edge cases" - welcome to my life.
But VMware is BETTER. And $189 approaches zero compared to the cost of the time I spend with it.
Just as an FYI: 3D acceleration is supported to a degree in Parallels, I play Counter-Strike 1.6 in in 1920x1080 using OpenGL mode on my Mac. It isn't perfect for all games, but it does work!
Maybe he should've spent a second or two checking up on this before he did his test.
Didn't RTFA, I see. It states that Parallels Desktop 5 is available, but only for Mac. I just checked out their website and I have to agree.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.
It works, its free, it supports multiple CPUs. Done.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
And better, how?
Just BETTER?
There are cases where VMWare may be preferable, but unless you're running 16 systems, I don't see how it's "BETTER" for general use.
VirtualBox is at least $189 less than any other product. That makes it 189 times "BETTER" than anything else, especially when you start in with the feature comparisons.
- Virtual CPU count
- OpenGL
- Manageability/portability
- Live migration/teleportation
- Scriptable backend
- Dead Simple Interface
BTW, what could you possibly be struggling with?
I was just going to read and mod.. Oh well. It's worth it.
Wow. I see that they've stopped teaching good sentence and paragraph construction in college. Is it possible that this "paragraph" was cobbled together from several tweets?
This has been a feature of every VMware desktop release I've used, since before VirtualBox was around...
You are saying it yourself:
"There are cases where VMWare may be preferable"
My system is one of those cases.
I just flat out could not get VirtualBox to work correctly. I require a very complex network setup and their networking is not as robust as VMware.
My VMs are pushed out hard, running automated tests. I got occasional lock-ups in VirtualBox while VMware runs for days and days without a single problem.
For me, VirtualBox wins purely out of the fact that it's mostly open source and supports the largest amount of host OSs and runs on a few more that aren't "supported" officially. Finally, a virtual machine that works with FreeBSD as a host.
However, from a performance standpoint I can't tell the difference between VMware and VirtualBox, except perhaps that VirtualBox doesn't seem to hammer the host OS quite as hard.
For smaller scope tasks, there's nothing wrong with Virtual Box, but when you start running 50+ machines, you just need something like ESXi server. I've never used the web interface and don't plan to. We always use the Windows client.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"$189 less than any other product. That makes it 189 times "BETTER""
I think you have some pretty serious issues with your math skills.
And you have no clue about costs.
The more expensive software product often makes for the lowest-cost system when you factor in the necessary hardware.
For example a $10,000 enterprise database is cheaper than a free one if it can do the same work on a $20,000 server that would require a $50,000 server for the free one.
Yes I do work with systems like that.
Don't forget to add Wine to the comparison - they up to v1.0.1 now.
And if you are using a Mac, that means you should consider Wine Bottler. It's like CrossoverOver, but it's better and free.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Just to point out that VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D acceleration. I used to play "armadillo" there and (by also using AMD-V virtualization extension) it works great.
I also saw some friends using it to develop flash games using Adobe Flash CS3 and it was really smooth.
For me VirtualBox wins because it works on Windows 7 home premium. VMWare Server requires Professional.
I also like the interface better than VMWare's free server product which I was using on my old xp pro installation.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
VMware Player and VMware Server are available for free. Also, if you are going to judge VirtualBox as being X times better than some other product because of cost, VirtualBox would then be infinitely better than VMware Workstation. But it's clearly not infinitely better. Only the open source edition of VirtualBox is free for everyone; the non-open source (precompiled) version is only free for personal use and evaluation. VMware Player, Server, and ESXi are free for everyone.
VMware has better USB passthrough support, as I've discovered by trying both VMware Player and VirtualBox (the device worked only in VMware Player). VirtualBox's USB support isn't even included in the open source edition.
VMware has automatic printing support for guests, without the need to manually share the printer or install a driver on a guest.
For desktop products, VMware has Easy Install, which automatically performs an installation of supported guest operating systems and automatically installs the tools.
VMware has Aero support in Windows VIsta/7, which VirtualBox does not. VMware's Direct3D and OpenGL support is more advanced.
VMware VMs are portable between ESX, ESXi, Player, Fusion, Workstation, Server.
VMware Server is manageable via the web interface or the full VMware vSphere/Infrastructure client. VMware VMs can also be accessed via VNC, even with the free Player. (RDP support for VirtualBox is not in the open source version, either.)
VirtualBox's interface is rather confusing, especially compared to that of VMware Player or VMware Fusion.
Linux's KVM module and the "Virtual Machince Manager" (VMM) app that uses it needs to be measured on here. The interface is simple and easy.
It has shiny features too:
- live OS migration.
- Tools like "Test Drive Ubuntu" can use it to give you one-click "Test your bug in a daily build VM".
- FOSS on FOSS (Linux, BSD, etc) no-latency driver requests being passed to the Host OS, meaning only 1 context switch per Virtual-Physical interrupt.
- It's contributers are all still in the business of improving it (unlike all those mentioned except Parallels)
- It's FOSS, has very little code, is the fastest growing
- Its modules can run code for other CPUs (good for the oncoming ARMs).
Hardware virtualization helps for Windows virtualization. Please measure programs that use it (other than with Virtualbox which doesn't cooperate).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
It's too bad that no VM tool seems to support OS X as a guest. I'm sure it must be possible.
When it comes to VM's I use for interactive work like running Win32 desktop apps or gaming, I prefer Parallels Desktop 5 on OS X. It even has WDDM drivers for Winblows. Very slick, integrates well with OS X and has good enough 3D performance to play some games.
When it comes to virtual servers, I use VirtualBox where scalability isn't a HUGE concern. I also use it extensively in the classroom since it's quite free and not hard for students to get ahold of and feel comfortable using it. The 3D performance is awful and it's not as fast as parallels but it's solid and a good workhorse.
If I were hosting 50 VM's, I'd probably go with VMWare ESX but their desktop offerings VMWare Workstation and VMWare Fusion (OSX) have failed to impress me much. Not saying they suck but Parallels 5 is noticeably faster, more stable (for both host and guest) and integrates better with the Host OS for desktop use.
All are good products but I prefer Parallels on OSX, VBox on everything else. If they develop a Windows/Linux version of Parallels 5 that is just as good, I'd probably buy it.
One interesting point though, why does VBox support for FreeBSD guests suck so horribly? You'd think a fairly open VM would have better support for open source guests. Parallels supports FreeBSD in a much better fashion.
None of these products are perfect, they all have problems.
These are complex products with many many features and I don't imagine there are many of us who use all of them.
Stuff that seems like a minor issue to one user is a total show-stopper to another.
Your success with a product means nothing to another user if they are using it differently or are attempting to use a different set of features.
Really the only answer is you have to try them for yourself and see how they work for you.
Fortunately even the pay-for products have a free evaluation period so you can try them out without shelling out the cash.
If you work with the product all day then the cost of purchase is pretty irrelevant compared to what you are doing with it. How much is your time worth?
"since all our desktop computers are very old and run XP "
"there's no money in the budget for that".
"nor can we afford $2000-5000 for a decent computer"
"causing many days' worth of lost time."
You clearly have big problems with the whole concept of what is cheap and what is expensive.
Damned straight! Why else would I buy a machine with 8 cores and 32 Gb RAM?
Editing video and/or large photographs shot in raw format.
VMware Workstation has the "Virtual network editor" tool which does exactly that. It's been there since v6.0 if I remember correctly.
This has been a feature of every VMware desktop release I've used, since before VirtualBox was around
It's not as obvious how to do it on VMware Workstation, though.
You need to change one of the "virtual networks" to bridge to a specific adapter. In addition, on a Windows host you should disable all protocols but the "VMware Bridge protocol" from binding to that adapter. Then, you set the VM to use that virtual network.
I have my vCenter server running this way, because version 2.5 could run on a domain controller, and version 4 cannot. An install of workstation later, and vCenter is running with its own dedicated NIC.
Yeah, no kidding. I feel like I'm losing my sanity at this place.
VirtualBox is the only one in Ubuntu's repository, so that's the one I use. Can't be arsed with binary installers that can't be removed and break whenever you run a system update.
It took very little time for me to discover that VMware has absolutely no colour management capability, which completely kills any chance you have of using Windows-based, colour-managed applications like Photoshop (unless you are intentionally not using a colour-managed workflow).
The color matrix/LUT itself must obviously be created and applied in the host OS (I use Argyll and an X-Rite i1 Display 2 all on Linux, which work great) but it's useless if the Windows application isn't aware of the display profile.
I did a bit of reading and it turned out VirtualBox does support hardware display profiles for Windows guests; the same afternoon I had a Windows XP VirtualBox guest running Photoshop CS3 with full colour management and has since been working great. Strongly recommend to other Linuxy designer-types finding themselves in a similar situation.
On a related note, if ever you do create a calibrated monitor profile using Argyll that you intend to use with Firefox, use a matrix type profile, not a LUT -- Firefox apparently does not support the more accurate LUT profiles at all, but matrix profiles work just fine. I use the LUT for the general display profile but point firefox explicitly to an alternate matrix profile so that photos containing embedded display profiles show up with gamma and especially saturation levels for my display.
VMware has Aero support in Windows VIsta/7, which VirtualBox does not. VMware's Direct3D and OpenGL support is more advanced.
Just thought I'd chime in on this. True VMWare will run aero. But it doesn't run it fast by any means at least in my experience on an E8400 Core2Duo running Ubuntu 9.10 as a host and Win7 guest. And VBox will run compiz in a Linux guest surprising well. Last I checked, VMWare didn't support compositing in a Linux guest. So, depending on what you're doing is what makes one better than the other in this regard.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I thought it was as simple as putting that NIC in bridge mode with the vNIC...
Performs fine for me using VMware Fusion and a Windows 7 guest.
Virtual Box doesn't have drag and drop between guest and host. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...when it works. It doesn't have hardware accelerated 3D, and I've had trouble getting certain things working under a VM. For example, I had a little USB device that only works under Windows 98 -- it would be great if a VM could access that, though it'd also be dangerous unless done right (I don't want my VM talking to every USB device, just that one).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
All these other solutions are very good, but if you have any ambitions of possible migrating boxes to a production environment you almost have to go with VMWare. While the licensing cost of an Enterprise kit is expensive, the features that you get such as High Avail/DRS/VMotion are absolutely a godsend for any system admin (plus the whitelisted hardware specs). I don't work for VMWare, but run a small business's IT and have been through the upgrade path from VMWare server to ESX server.
Sig it.
Yea its very nice. Supports 3D acceleration too. I play wow in a box while my main system is network isolated:) I recommend VMplayer to everyone who wants to mess with it.
Meh, this reviewer obviously doesn't use any of these systems professionally. Virtual box seems nice but it was only recently it support live migration. Its always been a "work in progress" from my point of view and I only really use it when I have a dd image of something I need to mess with. Not sure about Parallels though. I have heard of them but never really looked at them.
To be honest, however, VMware really needs to catch up. I bought 7 not for the extra features but because I had a lot of vmdk files with multiple path snapshots. Hell, its why I bought the 6 upgrade from 5.
Mind you, this is all on the workstation development side. Start talking server and VMware wins, hands down over all other technology's. But then, they are expensive enough to make people pause before they drop for a ESX license. Hell, went to the Parallels site for the first time, and that $999 price for a server license is very tempting.
Yeah, I would imagine it's possible that the codebase for fusion on OSX and workstation on Linux could account for the difference. Who knows.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
VirtualBox is a lovely product, but remember it's now owned by Oracle.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Recently I took the big jump and ditched my OEM Windows Vista Installation and installed Ubuntu on my home laptop (my main computer).
I could not come to grips with the failure of Windows Vista as an operating system, and Microsoft's decision to roll out Windows 7. They shipped me trash with Windows Vista. I shouldn't have to guard my information with such vigilance. I shouldn't have to have a cleaner for this and a cleaner for that. I shouldn't have to worry about picking up some virus during general internet browsing. I shouldn't have to have two browsers loaded on one machine (win explorer and firefox). I shouldn't have to put up with the crap that is associated with any Windows distribution. There must be something better. Give me my grandmother's linux, give me Ubuntu.
Now, let's talk about gaming, something that is tightly tied to Windows distributions due to their control of the market place. There are several games that I enjoy playing that require Windows to run, Sim City, Rome Total War, Close Combat, and a few others. So, since my move to Ubuntu, I've investigated the many options available to emulate a Windows Box.
So, from what I can gather there are three viable options: WIne, VM Ware, and Sun's VirtualBox.
- First I tried WIne. Quite a disappointment when it comes to ease of use. Being new to Ubuntu, it was and is not easy for me to use. And, I've had no success installing the games mentioned above. So, I've stopped trying to use it
- Second I tried VirtualBox. I had used VirtualBox before with success on a Vista host with a XP guest for the purposes of work. So, when using it on an Ubuntu host with a XP guest, the user interface was very familiar. Along with the familiarity I experience came the same satisfaction with the user interface. I don't know if it would be any easier if Sun came to my house and installed it all for me.
So what are the negatives for VirtualBox? From what I can tell, no support for DirectX. While I can install and play SimCity4 (uses DirectDraw). I can not install and play Rome Total War (uses DirectX). I'm no expert, but I think this is because DirectX is Windows proprietary.
So, DirectX compatibility with VirtualBox is the roadblock between me and living happily ever after with my move to Ubuntu. But in the end, to me the value of being able to kick Windows to the curb outweighs the loss of the one game.
Someday, game companies will realize they could be free of the all encompassing grip of Windows if they would only do the work necessary to develop for a well supported Linux distribution.
Use it to run XP Piratebay Edition and Slackware 13, both mostly for experimenting on. The only problems I've found are the lack of a simple way to share files between them, the complete inability to install BSD due to cascading segfaults (which is weird since it'll practically run on a toaster), and the fact that I have to exit fullscreen and click outside the window to switch to another workspace in my host OS (Ubuntu). Other than those three things, I've found it pretty decent. An acquaintance of mine who is the stereotypical obsessed Mac fan swears by Parallels, and it does look nice, but the proprietary license and price tag put me right off.
The deal hasn't gone through yet.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
= games in VM
I guess they didn't know that Parallels Desktop V4 was superseded; after all, they are only the tech media...
PS - I've used Parallels since V3 and I like it a lot...
some of my fellow employees were forced to use VMWare by the IT guys (they are the art department - on Macs) and it makes their systems go nuts - SPOD, crashing, S L O W performance, hard to modify, does not play well with the rest of the system...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
never mind... sorry!
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Player is way better than Server. In fact, Player is almost equivalent to Workstation except it can't make snapshots and doesn't have the team stuff. And Player doesn't have that bloated retarded interface and massive install that Server has.
With Player you can create VM's and whatever you need just like Workstation. It can also run OSX (which is the killer feature VMware has over VirtualBox). Also, VMware has a performance advantage over VirtualBox. At least in the tests I have done (eg. compiling code and things like that).
VirtualBox is not bad though. It does have the advantage of having a free version with branching snapshot support. It lacks performance, Direct3D support, and the ability to run OS X easily (compared to VMware).
It takes me a day each year to determine exactly what is what so I can determine what I need to budget for the next year. The licensing is crappy too.
If xenserver had better resource management then I think vmware would be on its way out of my lab.
We use VMWare ESX 3.5 heavily in my company, and the Virtual Infrastructure Client is a pain to install and run. .NET framework. It disconnects every now and then, and it doesn't try to reconnect automatically (this was fixed in VMWare 4).
The client is available only for Windows, and requires the
As I'm a Linux user (and my company is cool about letting me run Linux), there is no acceptable way for me to run the client.
Using wine is not an option because the console doesn't work.
Apparently one can use the console through the web interface, but this requires a firefox plugin which is dynamically linked to some archaic versions of libraries, so it doesn't work if your Linux installation is from the past 5 years.
With VMWare 4 the applet does load, but the console doesn't work anyway.
So then I tried installing VMWare Server edition just to run Windows and then the VMWare client, but the installation was trying to screw up my filesystem badly (disclaimer, I use a non-rpm based, relatively unknown Linux distro).
Finally I hit the nail on the head by running the VMWware client under Virtualbox.
As a result now I'm a happy Virtualbox and not-so-happy VMWare ESX user.
VirtualBox is a great option, and as an OSS product it would be my first choice, but the big problem is the license.
For a small business (sub 50 computers) where we need to run 20-30 VMs on individual machines, we can't use the PUEL license. The OSS option is not an option, as it does NOT support USB. So you still have to pay for the product. And this is where it gets hairy, because if you are a small business, you don't have a Sun representative to contact, and I have never gotten a response to emails with requests for pricing. So I can't even go to management and tell them how much it will cost.
VMWare Player plus a single workstation license to create and configure the vms was the lowest cost option for a while. But now that VMWare Player 3 has come out, I don't even need workstation. VMWare Player can create virtual machines and install the tools into them, and change any of the important settings easily.
So now it doesn't matter how good VirtualBox gets, it is competing against free. At the high end, IT already knows VMWare; at the low end there is no incremental cost and a clear license. VirtualBox is easy to use. But now, even if they cleaned up the USB license and distributed a precompiled binary, everyone is trained on player, the VMs are built for player, and there is a certain amount of lock in. Feature for feature, snapshots are the only difference I see, but most of our users don't need them anyway.
I hate recommending the closed source option against an OSS one, but this call isn't one of those. It was disappointing that the article never touched on that, since clearly workstation and parallels are primarily intended for professionals. The authors license was legitimate (evaluation) but his audience of professionals? They aren't compiling their own without USB, they are breaking the license. And that doesn't help OSS at all.
You also shouldn't forget to look at the licensing and costs.
Virtualbox is free and can be used on your work PC (where most VM's are being used).
For VmWare (and paralels too?) you must purchase a license. The VmWare Player is here also not allowed to be used due to licensing.
So when only requiring running VM's on your local machine, VirtualBox is the best option.
VmWare Workstation also has its use, when you locally edit an VM and later on plan to install it on a (VmWare) server. Here the cost are worth the benefit.
As I see it; VirtualBox is more than VmWare's player, but slightly less than the Workstation. If you intend to run the VM only on your local machine, use VirtualBox. If you plan for something greater and a whole VM infrastructure, you should better use VmWare Workstation.
Personlly, VirtualBox is all I need.
I use vmware mostly at work, cause well...it's kind of the industry standard these days. But for home use, I turn to virtualbox, I run a number of VM's at home and it works just great. Virtualbox was notably behind vmware a few cycles ago (say 1.x and 2.x), but all my "problems" were resolved in later versions, and now it's a real joy to use virtualbox. Usability wise it certainly get's a 10/10 from me, easy as can be. I am however still looking to make the move to KVM for home use, but the tools aren't up to the task yet in my opinion. So for now, virtualbox is a definate win!
The difference is that the other features you listed (3D, speed, administration) are features of the software, while the "freeness" is a characteristic of the folks producing the software. If I go to read a review of a bunch of new car models to try to determine what to buy, I wouldn't expect the characteristics of the car company to be included in the review scores, unless it's relevant to the job the car is supposed to be doing.