#VMWARE ODER VIRTUAL PC DRIVER#
In a graphical OS like Windows, a new mouse driver enables pointer integration. Besides performance boosts, they add extra features that allow you to blur the line a little between VM and host.
#VMWARE ODER VIRTUAL PC DRIVERS#
AdvertisementĪre you planning on rigorous compatibility testing or just sampling other possible configurations? Do you want pure performance or just an environment for containing potential accidents? Do you want to run lots of different OSes or will you stay within the Windows family? Will you need to use special hardware within your VM or is a generic setup acceptable?īoth pieces of software come with special drivers optimized for the VM's "hardware" (VM Additions for Virtual PC and VM Tools for VMware). While general performance is an important consideration (and easily quantified), your eventual uses for the software are more important. In fact, they're both so refined that your ultimate purchase decision will be affected more by your own needs than by any inherent problems with the programs. If you're interested in running applications, Virtual PC 2004 (Microsoft US$129) and VMware Workstation 4.5 (VMware US$189 to download, US$199 with packaging) are both competitive tools for the job. Simpler games ran reasonably, but people solely interested in gaming should try something like DOSBox first. Tests with a couple random games ( Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and Gabriel Knight 2) didn't get far beyond their installation. Also, since VM software tends to emulate common hardware, you're less likely to encounter driver issues with an esoteric OS.Īnyone hoping to use VM software to play favorite DOS games will probably be disappointed. Since VMs can use virtual partitions (a partition that lives inside a file of dynamic or fixed size), you don't have to worry about reclaiming any hard drive space lost to experimentation. You can also use VM software to sample alternative operating systems without committing a dedicated partition to the job. They also include strong scripting tools for automating VMs. The feature sets of both companies' offerings are more specialized for integration with server OSes. Microsoft is getting ready to release Virtual Server 2005. VMware has two products in this category ( VMware GSX Server 3 and ESX Server 2). More robust pieces of software are available for virtualizing servers. With the right VM software, you can setup a virtual network to practice domain management and software rollouts without putting production equipment on the line. On especially beefy hardware, VMs can be used to simulate complicated network operations. If you encounter a bug, you can switch back to the host, correct the code, and send an updated executable back for further testing.
If you need to test your program on other versions of Windows, virtual machine (VM) software allows you to run Windows 98 without forcing you to reboot your computer.ĭecent VM software also allows some exchange between the host machine (the real one) and the virtual one. Say you're developing an application under Windows XP. System requirements: 500MHz Pentium II or better, 128MB RAM, Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, various Linux distributions Why should I use a VM? System requirements: 400MHz Pentium II or better, 32MB RAM, Windows 2000 or XPĬost: US$189 to download, US$199 with packaging ( Shop for this title)
However, since display and I/O functions are mapped to slightly different components (a window or a virtual partition, for example), they incur a slight performance hit. Since the OS is running on its native platform, no emulation is necessary virtualization allows it to run with little cost to CPU performance. Virtual machine software can fool an operating system into thinking it's running on its own hardware, when in reality it's simply mooching off unused CPU cycles and RAM. While your philosophy major friends were quick to point out that thinkers since Descartes have posed the same question, it's likely that none of them ever considered the converse: what if, unbeknownst to them, our computers were really running inside other computers for the selfish interests of a special group of people?Īs esoteric as this may sound, such a setup has been in use for a very long time. A recent film ignited a new generation of armchair epistemologists when it proposed that we could be living inside an elaborate computer simulation.