Which virtual PC to buy ?

ian408 · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Or freebie if avail.

I assume these programmes are written & sold by diff companies

I have duo processor & 2 gig ram so power isnt a big worry.

What is it that you want to run using a virtual machine? Right now,
VMWare is probably the one to get if you really need it.

gus · April 29, 2006

ian408 · April 29, 2006

I guess so. But you do realize that legally, you need to have a license for
each copy of the OS you run, right?

DavidTO · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Ahhh...thats the name i was searching for...google didnt give it to me. Im over the net garbage (virus/adware etc) & have a good friend who i was visiting this morning whom offered me the advice.

Said its one sure way to be able to go back to a point previous.

Better than just backing up?

gus · April 29, 2006

DavidTO · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

i asked whats the diff between virtual PC & a restore & he said something about a restore only does the files This stuff is like teaching a pig to sing for me...its hard to do & annoys the pig.

Well, I'm just gonna stop asking questions...you're talking about a PC, of which I know nothing. My back up is a full back up I could boot off of without even restoring, so if my drive crashes I'm just a restart away from being up and running.

gus · April 29, 2006

DavidTO · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

I have never in 6 years of owning a PC ...done a backup. I defragged one once about 3 years ago though.

You're playing russian roulette if you don't back up. Your drive WILL fail. It's just a matter of when.

I mean, you change your oil, right?

gus · April 29, 2006

ian408 · April 29, 2006

DavidTO wrote:

You're playing russian roulette if you don't back up. Your drive WILL fail. It's just a matter of when.

I mean, you change your oil, right?

Dude. That's why you do block copies

Or if you're really brave, you
take the dead disk to Datafront Action Labs

luke_church · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Ahhh...thats the name i was searching for...google didnt give it to me. Im over the net garbage (virus/adware etc) & have a good friend who i was visiting this morning whom offered me the advice.

Said its one sure way to be able to go back to a point previous.

It will work, and yes, I do use a Virtual PC (MS Virtual PC, as it happens) for security research and as a 'throw away computer', however you will pay a serious performance cost associated with the address translation etc. (I have used these things on quad Xeons, and still they feel slow)

You are **really** not going to want to run Photoshop in a VPC.

A Duo processor won't help you. By virtual of the way a VPC works, it will only saturate a single thread. Or at least the ones I've seen up to now will. So a Duo processor will only help if you primary OS is doing useful things as well. Maybe VMWare can do full virtual thread promotion into a VPC, but I really doubt it.

So, browsing the web in one PC and using the other for work is a tolerable, but massively overkill solution unless you spend a lot of your time looking at very dubious bits of the internet.

Incidentallly, I would recomend you do this if you with to use 'P2P' junkware.

Luke

gus · April 29, 2006

ian408 · April 29, 2006

Luke, I think what Gus wants (really) is just a second copy of Windows with
which to rebuild the other should things go TU.

You could do that with VMWare or you could do it with Windows by installing
a second copy. The later comes with the problem those files could be
infected as they're installed in a separate directory in the same file system.
But if he uses VMWare in the dual-boot mode, I don't think he'll suffer appreciably.

Now if he wants to run in multiple machine mode, well then that'd definitely
be a performance problem.

gus · April 29, 2006

luke_church · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Sorry...i thought thats what luke was talking about. Yeah thats it ian. My biggest problem is "..ok you kids...you are not allowed on my new computer blah blah blah..ok?" 15 mins later i get the baby seal eyes..."..we promise that we wont download any music or stuff that we dont know what it is off MSN" The hard nasty father.." well ok seeing as you said you wont"

Have you considered Norton Ghost?

Ghost -> DVD. When your kids eat your machine, you stick the DVD back in and wipe the disk to where it was again.

Sure, you need some way of keeping your data seperate, and you need to be careful that this doesn't allow viruses to creep in the new system, but it'll allow you do quick 'repairs'.

Luke

ian408 · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Sorry...i thought thats what luke was talking about.

There are several ways to run VMWare. Some shops are using it to maximize
the variety of OS's they can run. For example; if I want to run three versions
of Linux, I could buy three machines or run VMWare and three virtual
machines. You could also run vmware, boot windows and run Linux apps in
a window.

From the thread, you might be better off making the occassional image
backup to a similar sized removable disk (like an 80G Firewire drive).

I'd stay away from Ghost.

Something else you could do is venture into the world of ACLs and take away
the rights to the accounts your kids use

luke_church · April 29, 2006

ian408 wrote:

Something else you could do is venture into the world of ACLs and take away
the rights to the accounts your kids use

As I have said, repeatedly, elsewhere (I didn't say it again here, as I was [beginning] to be tedious)

The way to do this properly is to learn how to use Windows. Setup your kids with a restricted functionality account, and use ACLs and software policies, to make it so all they can do is wreck their own data space, which you can then perge.

However I got the impression that Gus wanted an out of the box solution.

If you're going to image to an external disk by whatever means, make sure you unplug the disk afterwards.

Luke

gus · April 29, 2006

luke_church · April 29, 2006

luke_church wrote:

Maybe VMWare can do full virtual thread promotion into a VPC, but I really doubt it.

Retracted. VMWare now claims to have Virtual SMP.

Things have moved on since I last used it.

Luke

luke_church · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Thanks ian...had a look around their site....does this look free to you ? I know they have a 30 triel somewhere in their site also but looking at this page..it appears to be free

I think this will be for playing virtual machines that others have created. You'll need to create your own.

But take what I say with a pinch of salt, it's been some years since I used VMWare.

Luke

ian408 · April 29, 2006

Gus,

Indeed the player is free. But you'll want something to play

Which means
you need to run vmware's either workstation or server product if you want to
use the player.The website says USD$189 for the windows version of the
workstation product.

Ian

gus · April 29, 2006

luke_church · April 29, 2006

Humungus wrote:

Cool...thanks for your time here guys.

Always a pleasure.

:

Which virtual PC to buy ?

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