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Virtual PC is free, however, I wouldn't poke at it with a stick because you need Windows to run it and it won't run a multitude of OS' other than MS-DOS, OS/2 or various Windows versions. They make no mention of Linux in their FAQ which shows you that they really care about what you run as long as it's Windows.
This by itself is a reason to shy away from it. VMware runs on Linux or Windows, and they have an Intel-based Mac version in testing which will let you run existing VM's.
So for right now, VMware has the market and currently has my attention. Creating a webfarm wasn't this easy 5 years ago... =:D
Actually, I suspect Virtual PC will run more OSes than VMWare. The fact that it supports OS/2 shows that it is able to support an OS that uses some fairly sophisticated hardware tricks. VMWare doesn't currently run OS/2 as far as I know, though they were working on that issues at one point (the OS/2 code never made it past beta).
The fact that VMWare runs on Linux is a huge plus as far as I'm concerned, but I do wish its emulation was more robust. I'd love to juggle Windows and OS/2 VMs under Linux, for example.





Member since:
2006-02-04
The general idea of the article. I have had more positive experience with VMwares product, it is a better product. MS is still a newcomer in this arena and while they make a acceptable product, it will be take a while for them to reach the overall quality/feature set/fine tuning level that VMware has achieved.
You also have to figure in that MS forced VMware to provide their entry level products for free. I already have dozens of VM's built. Would I consider switching? Not unless the MS product completely blows VMware out of the water and is free.