Thinkpads Forum

Do you have any experience vith virtual machines. Which is the best? I concentrated the search on VMware 5.0 and MS Virtual PC 2004?

Any comments?

I like the VMWare very much - easy setup and good protability.

I like VMWare as well...take a look at the new VMWare player - it's free and depending on what you want to do might be what you are looking for (can't create VM's with it but can play back VM's for example).

I use MS Virtual PC 2004 (because it ships with my MSDN subscription) without problems. The only know issue is that SP1 for Virtual PC raised problems with Intel SpeedStep enabled (so I didn't installed it).

Thanks for comments. I also can get MS Virtual PC out of MSDN subscription. Was just wondering if there is much new to VMware 5.0 compared to 4.0. Read some reviews of 4.0 and Virtual PC but couldn't find comparison between 5.0 and VPC 2004. Looks like more like the VMware version in general. The difference is in USB support.

VMware is tpyically considered better suited for testing purposes (has been for years), while VirtualPC has been a consumer product (for running things your host PC's OS can't) until rather recently.

VMware was designed for more robust use, while VirtualPC is a more consumer oriented product (until recently).

Which is better? I personally haven't seen recent versions of either, so I couldn't say. They just have very different histories (and purposes).

Actually I found one annoying issue with Virtual PC 2004. If you run it (even without starting any virtual machine) the clock in the host machine (Windows XP SP2 in my case) gets delayed about one minut per hour. No CPU utilization noticed.

Anyone has similar problem ?

Puppy wrote:Actually I found one annoying issue with Virtual PC 2004. If you run it (even without starting any virtual machine) the clock in the host machine (Windows XP SP2 in my case) gets delayed about one minut per hour.

Havent notices that unitil you mentioned it. Have been observing the clock for about half a day and indeed seems to be delayed for about 4 minutes. However I find VPC 2004 quite ok, have three VMs; one with Longhorn, one with XP Prof. and one with 2000 Prof. everything except the clock works well for me.

Thanks for respose, so I'm not alone with this issue :-) It must be something with Windows XP as a host or ThinkPad power management driver. I use the same version of VPC on desktop machine (Windows 2000 SP4 as a host) which does not exhibit this problem at all. I'll investigate it ...

I use VPC 2004 everyday as it's essential for the current Microsoft curriculum, and I can tell you VMware is leaps and bounds better.

Specifically VPC is a pig for ram and threading. Service pack 1 helped, but it's still got a long way to go.

Mind you aren't exactly comparing Apples to Apples. VPC is hosted on desktops O/Ss only and VMware GSX is desktop and Server loadable. ESX is a fantastic O/S but costs a pretty penny. Both VM products have many more features and are really meant to be installed out in the real world instead of physical boxes. Server consolidation IS their business.

Virtual Server 2005 looks promising. I used it briefly today, and the remote is pretty cool. Will have to revisit after I've had more experience with it and it's had at least 1 service pack .

Ed

krma-thkpds wrote:Havent notices that unitil you mentioned it. Have been observing the clock for about half a day and indeed seems to be delayed for about 4 minutes.

Actually it isn't Virtual PC only, could you check this http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=18618 ?

As for VMware, there is serious security issue:
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/12 ... pdate.html

Anyone has tried Microsoft patch KB899525 ( http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;899525 ) for the Virtual PC SP1 and SpeedStep issue ? Or BIOS update did the trick ?