A few weeks ago I started experimenting and using Sun Virtual Box.  I wanted to let others know about it.

It is free, very easy to use and supports Windows products, Linux and Mac.  It is more user-friendly than VMWare Workstation.

I've been running virtual machines on my Vista laptop for Windows XP Pro, Windows 7 Ultimate and Ubuntu (just for the heck of it) and I plan on installing more Virtual Boxes down the road (Windows 2008 Server, etc).

http://www.virtualbox.org/

I used to use VMWare Workstation but uninstalled it.  I couldn't see any advantage and Sun Virtual Box being free suited my budget more.

For a developer it is VERY useful to have it for testing purposes and to save money on equipment, etc.

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

Thanks for pointing this out. I was using VMware also but switched and I like it much better, and you can't beat the price!

Very cool. We just bought a copy of the newest VM workstation for some in-house testing, and it's honestly never been my favorite. Downloading this now to take a look .

I've been using it for a while. It works great.

And if you are on Windows 7 and the machine processor hasn't got the hardware virtualization feature, it will be the best choice, since the Windows 7 Virtual PC thing won't work without it.

With Virtual Box, it is configurable.

FWIW... I've had mixed success with Virtual Box... I've used it (and still do on some workstations) over the past year or so, wanting to get away from Virtual PC. Still, I have found that on more than a few occasions my Virtual Box would refuse to boot, getting into an endless cycle of automatic reattempts to boot (running WindowsXP as the guest OS). Trying all the usual stuff (registry cleaning, safe mode booting, etc.), never seemed to pan out.



I still do run it on a couple of host OSs (Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit) but on other workstations have been forced back to the M$FT product. Every time Sun issues an update I try again, but have not been able to make the break for good.



I'll be interested to hear if anyone else has this problem (but hopefully not!).


________________
_____/ Regards,
____/ al

FYI, MS released an update to their Windows XP Mode to make it available for hardware without virtualization support. Just need to download the 3rd file in the whole XP Mode downloads here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx



I have installed in computers without hardware virtualization and works just fine.

Edhy Rijo

Thanks Edhy!

That update wasn't available when I tried it. Thanks for your tip!