Although Windows 7 has the new and improved Microsoft Virtual-PC so that it can run XP-Mode it is not as "polished" as Sun's VirtualBox (and of course, VMWare is likely to be even more so - as it is a "paid" solution - VMPlayer is free but lacks some of the features of the full product).
Virtual-PC, for Windows 7, is supposedly a vast improvement on Virtual-PC 2007, there are enhancements that have been made to the Integration Features (in that USB devices are now accessible from the virtual machine), however, these are pretty much limited to Windows guest operating systems - the use with a Linux guest is not as slick (full screen mode, cursor capture etc.).
VirtualBox on the other hand, has a full suite of Guest Additions that allow both Windows and Linux to operate in a 'Seamless Mode'.
From the Microsoft faq page for Virtual PC the following observations are made about Virtual PC as compared to VirtualBox:
PS - a search for: "ubuntu 9.10 screen resolution under ms virtualpc 2007 800" hit this blog - the screen resolution under VirtualPC (The new one!) sucks as compared to VirtualBox.
You can find a more in-depth discussion of this topic and the use of VirtualBox on my website www.tempusfugit.ca
Links:
Virtual-PC, for Windows 7, is supposedly a vast improvement on Virtual-PC 2007, there are enhancements that have been made to the Integration Features (in that USB devices are now accessible from the virtual machine), however, these are pretty much limited to Windows guest operating systems - the use with a Linux guest is not as slick (full screen mode, cursor capture etc.).
VirtualBox on the other hand, has a full suite of Guest Additions that allow both Windows and Linux to operate in a 'Seamless Mode'.
From the Microsoft faq page for Virtual PC the following observations are made about Virtual PC as compared to VirtualBox:
- Support for XP-Mode to 2014
- Needs AMD-V or VT - (VirtualBox does not)
- Cannot support a 64 bit guest - (VirtualBox does)
- Is aimed at small businesses (larger enterprises are supposed to use MED-V)
- 3-D graphics, audio, and TV tuners, do not work well under virtualization today. - so it not available on Home Premium (This is especially true of the Microsoft virtualization product!)
- XP-Mode is a free download of a fully licensed copy of XP SP3 (in 7) - but a copy of XP is easy to find if you look
- MED-V is built on Virtual-PC (one wonders if it has similar limitations?)
PS - a search for: "ubuntu 9.10 screen resolution under ms virtualpc 2007 800" hit this blog - the screen resolution under VirtualPC (The new one!) sucks as compared to VirtualBox.
You can find a more in-depth discussion of this topic and the use of VirtualBox on my website www.tempusfugit.ca
Links:
- All pages relating to Virtualization on The Technology Muse
- How to configure Virtual Box to run DVD43 in Windows 7 XP-Mode
- XP-Mode can be Broken
2 comments:
Saw your post on the Sun Buzz Blog, thanks for the comparison.
I tried Ubuntu 9.10 on VirtualBox and while I am generally impressed with the O/S I can't help feel that it needs to be spiced up a little more to be a serious contender to compete with Windows 7.
I tried Karmic Koala on both Microsoft's Virtual-PC and in VirtualBox and the experience was night and day! I tried to get the resolution up above 800x600 in the Win7 VM but all I managed to do was to screw it up completely. I was trying to edit the xorg.conf file directly - something that is not necessary in VirtualBox as the screen resolution seems to be just fine as soon as you apply the guest additions to the GUI.
All in all it gave me the encouragement to install 9.10 on a spare computer that I had kicking around as its main o/s (the old motherboard and processor that I replaced so that I could see what Windows 7 was all about!)
Now all we need is Canonical to get their act together and work on getting their GUI to look sexy!
The search was was: microsoft virtual pc vs virtualbox
It is now a little late in the day for this discussion as Microsoft have moved on with their HyperVisor technology.
However, if all you are looking for is a relatively simple virtualization solution then I can recommend VirtualBox. In my experience with creating virtual machines I have fewer problems with Sun/Oracle VirtualBox.
For example, when connecting an external USB/DVD drive (so that I could copy using DVD43 in a 32 bit VM) I had no problems in getting the drive to be seen by the decrypter. I could not say the same for the Microsoft VirtualPC - this is not to say that this has not been fixed (Aug 2012)
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