Over the years, I’ve switched between VMware Workstation, VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual PC, and Microsoft Virtual Server for my Virtual Machine hosting platforms.  A friend of mine recently suggested checking out VirtualBox from Sun.  I was somewhat hunting for a new platform because I no longer own a VMware Workstation license, and the free version of VMware Server has went completely web based which I found very difficult to use.  I’ve tried to like Virtual PC, but Microsoft has seemed to abandon this product and fully investing in their Hyper-V technology.  I’ve heard great things about Hyper-V, but it’s not laptop friendly (i.e. it disables Windows hibernation, and requires 64bit Windows Server 2008 OS).  Microsoft Virtual Server is a solid product, but it too is web based, which I just don’t like for personal use.

VirtualBox is free, fast, solid, and feature rich.  It supports everything you’d expect, as well as USB.  It’s not web based which I love, and they seem to roll out new builds nightly.  I’m very happy with this product, and it looks pretty nice too.  I’d be happy to pay 50-100 bucks for this, but 0 is fine too.