Is VMWare workstation good?

[Perman]

Hi, folks: I just bought this new SONY VAIO notebook recently, but it loads with WinXP sp2 media center edition, it plays very well. Its process is Intel centrino duo core 2 T-5500 and is Vista Capable (64 bits). I am thinking to install Vista O/S on it. Is VMWare workstation is suitable for this purpose ? By doing that I can have two working systems all time and no conflict ? Currently I have DeepFreeze standard installed, does it have anything negatively to my plan? Anything I should know before getting too deeply with no return ? Thanks in advance.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Hi, folks: I just bought this new SONY VAIO notebook recently, but it loads with WinXP sp2 media center edition, it plays very well. Its process is Intel centrino duo core 2 T-5500 and is Vista Capable (64 bits). I am thinking to install Vista O/S on it. Is VMWare workstation is suitable for this purpose ? By doing that I can have two working systems all time and no conflict ? Currently I have DeepFreeze standard installed, does it have anything negatively to my plan? Anything I should know before getting too deeply with no return ? Thanks in advance. <-QUOTE}

I use VMware Workstation and like it a lot. But you have to have the resources for it. I run quite a bit in it, but I have enough ram on the host to be able to give the VM machine a full 1gig. I also have it set up with 2 20gig drives, dual processor, and dual monitor. Quite impressive.

I don't see why Deepfreeze would matter.

Pete

[Chuck57]

VMware is probably the Rolls Royce. I use it, but as was said, to really appreciate it, you should have lots of RAM.

Another very good one is the free VirtualBox. I have both but use VB more with my Linux programs. They run a bit faster in VirtualBox, and I have a Gig of RAM on this thing, which has XP Pro as primary OS.

[Perman]

Hi, guys Thanks for the inputs. I am d/l ing now, wow, 270 Mb size and asking US$169. I would not mind paying it for a really gooood app. One thing I worry is the RAM, I have only 1gig on this new notebook, is it enough ?

[starfish_001]

enough but more is better

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Hi, guys Thanks for the inputs. I am d/l ing now, wow, 270 Mb size and asking US$169. I would not mind paying it for a really gooood app. One thing I worry is the RAM, I have only 1gig on this new notebook, is it enough ? <-QUOTE}

That depends on what you want to do. Right now I have AOL's radio and opera(I am in it now) running on the vm machine, and 3 graphic intensive financial graphic's packages on the host, and all are running at top speed. Probably couldn't do that on 1 gig.

You would probably have to split 512 512. If you want to run Vista, that would probably be tough.

[Meriadoc]

I have VMWare Workstation 6 and believe it is the best in the field. (I also have Parallels.)
{QUOTE-> Anything I should know before getting too deeply with no return ? <-QUOTE}
The proof of the pudding is in the eating - Workstation has a trial.

edit : ah, I see you have d/l.

[Longboard]

It's a good tool
From recent experiences: some Linux distros work better than others on XPHome host.
The initial learning curve is easy, the further you get into it here's a steeper run then easy.
You may end up spending hours in the VMs. :)

[Rasheed187]

Yes it´s a cool tool, but I´ve tried to cutback usage because I guess it´s not really good for your HDD, I mean all this disk-usage during reboots and stuff. And btw, have you all noticed that when you copy stuff from your host to guest, it will almost always ask you if you want to copy and paste? I think this is very annoying, can this be turned off? :gack: