Free Virtualization

[Jeff Mottle]

As I just upgraded to Vista 64 bit there were a few older apps I have not upgraded that would not work. The only option was to upgrade the software or install some virtualization software and run my old copy of WIndows XP. I've used both Parallels and VMware virtualization apps and use them on my mac, but given limited budgets I wanted something free. At SIGGRAPH someone told me about a Sun System virtualization app called Sun VirtualBox that is free.

 

I installed it and installed XP into the VM and it works great! There are a few more refined features that are missing that you find in the commercial VM apps, but this seems to work really well for what I needed.

 

Just thought I would post a link in case anyone else has a need for a free virtualization software: http://www.sun.com/software/products/virtualbox/

[Dave Buchhofer]

Looks very nice.. when i switched up to 64bit here, i did a massive cleanup of my old XP32 install, and ran a free software from VMWare to convert the existing installation to a virtual image, that loads up in their free vmware player with no problem.

 

(The conversion took something like 4 hours, but it all works perfectly now.)

[Jeff Mottle]

Looks very nice.. when i switched up to 64bit here, i did a massive cleanup of my old XP32 install, and ran a free software from VMWare to convert the existing installation to a virtual image, that loads up in their free vmware player with no problem.

 

(The conversion took something like 4 hours, but it all works perfectly now.)

 

 

I could have done that but my windows install was corrupted beyond repair when my last system fried in a power surge. I had to do a fresh XP install.

 

I have to admit though for as much of a bad wrap Vista received, I am finding I like it a lot more than XP. Granted I guess most of the bugs have been worked out. Will be upgrading to Windows 7 when it comes out as I purchased the upgrade with my vista build. I've read it has it's own built in virtualization app to ensure backward compatibility with legacy apps, which will be nice. Will be curious to see how well that works with both services and apps.