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.
