Best VM for me?

bww · 08 Aug 2010

Getting a new laptop Wed with Win 7 Pro (6 gb mem) moving from a WinXP pro and want to use basic virtualization (new laptop is hardware compatible). I have read lots of threads and looked, as much as I could, at VirtualBox, VMPlayer and VirtualPC xpmode. Which should I use?

1. I will only be running either Win7 or XP as the guest OSs and not doing anything but basic things. XP just to have my old system and Win 7 if I want to try something before loading to my real system.
2. I would like to get my old XP system over to be able to run programs from it by using a VHD save (I have acronis for doing the image backup as VHD).
3. Very imporant is I want something that will be easy and as trouble free as possible as I am new to virtualization.

What is the best choice for me of the three programs?

Thank you

Dinesh · 08 Aug 2010

I'd recommend virtualbox. It's easy to use, IMO.
Besides, many ppl here uses MS XP Mode.

Pusspa · 08 Aug 2010

XP mode on win7 seems ok unless you actually want to use it! i say VirtualBox, its free, it works, and here i am posting from linux in win7!!

bww · 08 Aug 2010

Thank you both for your recommendation.
Would I be able to make a VHD of my current XP pro system (using Disk2VHD) and load it into virtualbox on my Win 7 system and run the programs, etc from the VHD?

pparks1 · 08 Aug 2010

I'd recommend VMware Player 3.x. That's the product that I use and have used VMWare products for a number of years. You certainly can convert your existing machine into a VM with the VMWare Converter...which is a free application.

For your needs, any of these products should work well enough with little difficulty.

Pusspa · 12 Aug 2010

bww said:

Thank you both for your recommendation.
Would I be able to make a VHD of my current XP pro system (using Disk2VHD) and load it into virtualbox on my Win 7 system and run the programs, etc from the VHD?

Migrate_Windows - VirtualBox

sandman · 12 Aug 2010

I am new to the Virtual world and i went with Virtual Player and it auto installed Windows Server 2008 R2 from the iso image of my hard drive and it went pretty fast works great as far as i can tell at this point in my usage of the program. I like it better than dual booting like I did with vista and Windows 7 and XP good luck to all in the virtual world.

Darician · 12 Aug 2010

VirtualBox is okay though I'd recommend VMware Player or VMware Workstation.

Mercurial · 13 Aug 2010

VmPlayer if you want real performance especially with graphics.

bagavan · 13 Aug 2010

try sun virtual box..