
InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at
VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC
off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the
best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers
near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.
Member since:
2006-01-03
Vmware Player has come a long way to handle the changes in the kernel and now it is quite pleasant. In earlier versions, you needed to "reinstall" manually the player (basically recompile the virtual devices and plug them into the running kernel).
Now, in the latest version, when you start the player it detects that the kernel changed and recompiles/plugs the devices in the fly. It just takes a few extra seconds than usual and it only happens when a new kernel is installed.
I think vmware nailed it nicely and made the extra effort to give the final user a consistent and polished solution.