Virtual PC vs VMWare

[Curley_Boy 0]

Warning long post!

 

Im running Windows 2000 Professional at the moment, and although it runs most of the programs I like, not all of them (mainly DOS based stuff) run like they used to under 98.

 

However I don't want to give up the stability of my 2000 system or waste valuable HD space with a dual boot setup..

 

So I've installed Virtual PC 4.3.2 and now have Windows 98SE running as a gest operating system along side, WinXP Pro, and Redhat 7.2

 

The emulation is perfect and all the guest OS are rock solid stable... however they are SLOWWwwwwwwwww! I've tried everything in the manual to make them run quick and to no effect... they can barely play sound files without stuttering and networking them has been a nightmare (still no luck under Redhat).

 

Im downloading VMWare Workstation 3.1 as I type this.. What experiences (positive and negative) have you people had with these products and which would you reccomend (as I primarly need speed, and effective use of disk space, and system resorces).

 

Thank you in advance.

[DosFreak 2]

Hmmm, Some people think VPC is faster and from the benchmarks that I have run it seems to be...slighly faster. The last benchmarking I performed between the 2 was between VPC 4.3 and Vmware 3.1 so things could have sped up alot by then.

 

Basically the consensus is that

vPC=Compatibility+ease of use.

Vmware=Network+Technical+Linux.

 

 

 

"The emulation is perfect and all the guest OS are rock solid stable... however they are SLOWWwwwwwwwww!"

 

It's pretty much the same under Vmware. I've had blue-screens in Vmware where I never did in VPC. Also if you do not install the additions/drivers for Vmware you will notice MANY oddities. Simply because Vmware compromises it's emulation (It's less emulation). That being so supposedly it's faster and it may be for you. It's not fast enough for me to switch however....I NEED STABILITY!

 

"I've tried everything in the manual to make them run quick and to no effect... they can barely play sound files without stuttering and networking them has been a nightmare (still no luck under Redhat)."

 

What kind of sound files? And why are you playing them in emulation? Also what kind of PC are you using? What kinds of networking trouble? The only trouble that I can think of that you may experience is guest-host networking without a NIC. Vmware installs it's own loopback adapter upon install but with VPC you have to install it manually.

 

 

Also you'll be happy to know that VPC 4.4 included MANY changes to the emulation. Fortunately you'll never get to use this version because Connectix has ramped the version up to 5.0! Yep, and you'll supposedly be able to upgrade to this version for free! This new ver will definetly make things interesting for VMware.

[Curley_Boy 0]

Well on the performance side of things im running a 1.2GHz Athlon processor, with 256 RAM and 2k Pro.

 

I was just testing an mp3 file under my emulated OSes (because even mouse movment, and text input was slow).

 

I've set up 2 of my guest OSes (Win 98SE, XP Pro) to use MS Network File/Print sharing under TCP/IP with static addresses (as i have with my other genuine PCs on my lan). I have set the shared networking component in VPC to 'Virtual Switch, Local, Host & External'. Thus far this has allowed my 2k host to view the VPCs on the lan and connect to thier shares (but the guests can't see or connect to the host).

 

Redhat... hmmm well I think Linux is daunting for any newbie, so theres no problem there as of yet thats any fault of VPC (since I can't even figure out the network config). It will take my a LONG time to get used to doing even simple tasks under Linux it seems so for now I'll simply concentrate on getting decent emulation for 98 and XP.

[CheekyMonkey 0]

VMware wil probably still be slow and chopey. I tried it with a couple different OSes and found the same results. Might as well not waste your time.

 

BTW, for better performance you might as well do a dual boot since technically you actually are using the HD space for the other OS.

[Curley_Boy 0]

Well a suprise result it seems, VMWare Workstation 3.1 is the winner, i've got it stable, Fast (vast as emulation under windows can be), and networking has made progress, v happy with it

 

Thanks for the replys guys

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

mm

 

i though Virtual PC was for the MAC...lol

[DosFreak 2]

heh. Without VPC MAC addicts would be MAC addicts no mo'! You should have seen 'em whine when VPC 4 came out for the PC! It was great.