Sunday, January 31, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
VMWare player
Shortly after my last operating system related post, I decided to try VMware Player instead of VMware Workstation. Not quire sure what prompted this but when I found that the latest version of Player (3.0) allows the creating of new guests, much of the rationale for Workstation disappeared. Six weeks later, Player is still in place. No hitches at all. Amazing.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Google in China - Reprise
Anne Lawrence, in a fascinating case study, drew attention to the dilemma Google faced with involvement with Chinese language search and its decision to place servers in China. This posting suggests Google is reconsidering its position.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
VMware Player
I have been a (relatively) happy VMware Workstation user for several years now. I was interested when VMware announced Workstation version 7 - until I discovered that there was a significant upgrade charge.
Since VMware Player 3.0 was announced at about the same time, I thought I'd see what Player was like: and that was three weeks ago and I haven't used Workstation since.
I'm not a real techie - I just want something that will run Linux and Windows side by side, and to be able to test new OS releases before migrating to them permanently. Sun's VBox, which I looked at and rejected as feeling like a bit of a toy a year ago, hasn't really improved as far as I could see. Player, in contrast, seems a serious piece of software. VMs seem to suspend and restart faster than with Workstation 6.5.2, and the switching bar at the top of the screen takes less space which I like. I've not found anything I need to do that I could with Workstation but can't with Player. Since version 3 supports the creation of new VMs, for people like me who simply want to have multiple OSs on one box, Player seems viable - and it's a no charge item.
Many years ago - here I'm thinking about about mainframes and IBM's VM product as much as desktop VM solutions - a big question was overhead; how much of performance hit does one take when running an operating system as a guest in a VM? With the falling price of memory and processing, the question, at least for much of my work (document reading / editing, and a small amount of C++ and PHP), has become largely moot. Only rarely do I notice any performance issues. So, thank-you VMware; sometimes technology does make our lives a bit easier.
Since VMware Player 3.0 was announced at about the same time, I thought I'd see what Player was like: and that was three weeks ago and I haven't used Workstation since.
I'm not a real techie - I just want something that will run Linux and Windows side by side, and to be able to test new OS releases before migrating to them permanently. Sun's VBox, which I looked at and rejected as feeling like a bit of a toy a year ago, hasn't really improved as far as I could see. Player, in contrast, seems a serious piece of software. VMs seem to suspend and restart faster than with Workstation 6.5.2, and the switching bar at the top of the screen takes less space which I like. I've not found anything I need to do that I could with Workstation but can't with Player. Since version 3 supports the creation of new VMs, for people like me who simply want to have multiple OSs on one box, Player seems viable - and it's a no charge item.
Many years ago - here I'm thinking about about mainframes and IBM's VM product as much as desktop VM solutions - a big question was overhead; how much of performance hit does one take when running an operating system as a guest in a VM? With the falling price of memory and processing, the question, at least for much of my work (document reading / editing, and a small amount of C++ and PHP), has become largely moot. Only rarely do I notice any performance issues. So, thank-you VMware; sometimes technology does make our lives a bit easier.
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