VMWare vs. Virtual PC

I prefer VMWare.
It has alot more configurable options than VPC.

I second that vote. VMWare can support NON windows OS's too....

Can't edit previous post so i'll add new one.

Just wanted to point out that i run Gentoo Linux 1.4 under VMWare. There are visual flaws running in 640x480x16 until the vmware-tools are installed but after that its fine. Never really done any benchmarking (might do it some day if i get bored..)

Benchmarks are great to look at, to give a consumer a general idea about a piece of software. And while VMWare is faster, in a real world setting those differences would not be noticed. The site notes some of the limitations in emulation as related to VMWare with its video emulation. What it fails to mention is that neither piece of software handles 3D graphics, so if you are looking for a way to preserve the memory of those old MS-Dos games on your glow in the dark XP machine, you will have some limits as to what software will run well in the emulated mode. Microsoft offers a 45-day trial on VPC.

As TDreamer noted you can run non-windows OS's on VMWare, well actually you can run any PC OS you want with either piece of software, since all the software does is emulate a PC. I have VPC running Mandrake on it.

The Biggest consideration to most consumers would be cost. VMWare runs between $299-$329 depending on distribution. VPC costs $129. Before it was bought out from Connectix by Microsoft, It was I believe $229. Hands down VMWare is faster, but I agree with the tester that the better value would be VPC.

I have had/used VMWare for a while, and just downloaded VPC last night. Will try a SuSE install on both soon.

It's been more than a year since I tried with VMWare, but I don't think I was ever able to get OS/2 to work in it. With VirtualPC, otoh, it went just fine (including sound).

I must be missing something here. What is the purpose of running Windows inside Windows? If you have 2 different distros, why not put them on separate partitions and boot into them separately? One of my PCs boots 8 different OSs.... It seems to me that running a system natively will always be faster and less buggy than emulation.

I can hardly wait for a VirtualPC that will run on my G5. Microsoft says Q2.

I use VMWare to test new settings/software. True it can be alot slower than nativly but the "Undo" function comes in handy more than you'd think. (especially with Linux and the like)

Wouldn't you find it easier to open up VMWare/VirtualPC to test something instead of rebooting and possibly breaking the OS?

You are missing something. The point is to be able to run different copies of windows at the *same* time on one computer, and to be able to test on different configurations that end up unaltered once you've finished testing, and an awful lot of other things. And I say I want to try linux out (indeed, in that Gentoo 1.4 configuration), but I only have one machine and I want to be doing everything else as normal - what do I do? I use VMware to run linux in XP. Also it's nice to have 98 in a window for testing and indeed games - MechWarrior 2 only works on 98.

Been using VMware here for several months and it is great. We have some ancient accounting software that will only run on Win95. The accounting software is extreamly sensitive to system changes. We take a snapshot of the system in good running order and never have to reboot the virtual machine. If the system crashes, as the accounting software likes to do, you revert to the snapshot and your ready to go. You can also put the same snapshot on several machines.

The only problem I have seen is that doesn't like you to PCanywhere directly to the virtual machine.