VMWare vs VPC?

From: Lauchlan M (LMackinnon_at_NOSPAMHotmail.com)
Date: 05/08/04 

Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 13:54:02 +1000

Hi

I am running an eval of VMWare Workstation 4.5 and it seems very nice to me.

I was looking at some google threads comparing the two, and am interested in
any opinions.

In the thread

<<
Subject: VMWare, VPC or Bochs?
Newsgroups: borland.public.delphi.non-technical
Date: 2004-03-09 12:10:35 PST
>>

I got the picture that VPC had some niceities over VMWare but at that time
was less stable.

One of the niceities sounded like

<<
VPC comes with OS images. So you don't have to start from scratch.
Although this is nice it really isn't a big deal. Perhaps that's what
he liked about it...
>>

does that mean it ships with complete OS's ready to drag and drop into the
virtual machines so to speak?

I know MS, if anyone, can provide that, but what is the legal status of
using these for development and testing? Do you need to have a full license
as well?

On stability:

<<
[Eric:]
Stay away from VPC until a few patches, it has huge stability issues
(only app that is able to lock WinXP solid here, and that's only
during the Win98 install boot on the virtual PC).
Needs a few more version to achieve maturity I guess.

[Bruce:]
My co-worker's computer crashed and was down for a week after
installing VPC2004. I don't know the details. So perhaps there's
some truth to the above statement.

>>

Madshi had some detailed issues with VMWare:

<<
What I hated is that even though the VMware tools were
installed, VMware sometimes (e.g. during boot) "captured" the mouse and
didn't want to free it unless pressing that special key combination.
With VPC such a thing *never* happens. Regardless of in which state the
virtual OS is (boot time or whatever), you can move the mouse over the
VPC window as you do over any other window. This sounds like a small
difference, but the VMware behaviour really annoyed me quite much.

Then in VMware you can press keys only if the input is captures to the
VMware window. Well, if you have the VMware tools installed, this is not
the case. But IIRC during boot the menu and in the BIOS it's still true.
In VPC you can press keys without needing to let VPC capture the mouse
first - even without the VPC tools installed. In general a VPC machine
window simply behaves more like a normal application window. It feels
just better for me.

Another important thing back when I evaluated both products was how I
could install the OSs. I have the setup files on my harddisk. For VPC I
was able to just blend my data partition into the virtual OS, so
installing the OS was very straightforward. In VMware I had to create an
ISO image first. That was very ugly, especially because it didn't really
work that well with the NT4 files.

Then VPC's simulated hardware (graphics card, sounds card etc) are
automatically detected by Windows during installation, while with VMware
you need to install special drivers for them.

There were some more things where VPC made my life easier than VMware,
which I don't remember right now...
>>

I noticed this first problem, and didn't know that ctrl-alt was the
solution. I quickly discovered that ctrl-alt-delete works on both the host
and the guest!

Kevin had some responses:

<<
> Then VPC's simulated hardware (graphics card, sounds card etc) are
> automatically detected by Windows during installation, while with VMware
> you need to install special drivers for them.

OK, that sounds like a little bit less effort in VPC than VMWare. It's
not particularly hard to set up under VMWare though. As long as you
create some base images you only have to go to this effort once though.
  I'd like to see how VPC handles Linux though.

One of the only things that I don't like about VMWare is that it seems
to default you to a particular folder for your VMs. I've chosen a
different path (on a different drive) but it keeps on reverting back to
the old folder. This isn't a problem because I can change it fairly
easily but it's a little bit tedious. Not sure whether this is an issue
with VPC. There is probably a way of changing this (registry?). I just
haven't spent much time investigating it because it really isn't that
much of a problem.
>>

This folder thing sounds like a nice feature as I would usually use a
different drive/partition. Is this possible in VMWare?

Anyway, VMWare looks very nice from the eval, I am just looking for
confirmation and opinions, and looking out for 'gotcha's.

Thanks!

Lauchlan M

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: VMWare, VPC or Bochs?
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    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
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