VMWare Station vs. Player

[jettj12]

My friend gave me his computer, and it had VMware station on it, according to him. I went on and I found VMWare Player and Station. Which one would be best to use?

 

[brady]

What are you trying to do with the VM? Player is just a 'player'. No VM modifications made through Player.
Station can modify the VM as well as launch/run the VM.

 

[pparks1]

What are you trying to do with the VM? Player is just a 'player'. No VM modifications made through Player.

This is incorrect. This "used" to be the way that VMWare Player worked, but VMWare changed this behavior with version 3.0 around a year ago and you can now create, modify, change VM's all you want.


VMware Workstation is the paid for product. It's more sophisticated than VMWare Player. The latest version of Workstation is $189. it allows more functionality like multiple network configurations on the host, snapshot capabilities on the VM's, etc

Personally if I had a paid for copy of Workstation, that is what I would use. But I've evaluated my needs and determined that I don't have a need to pay $189 for what I need from a VM at home. And I use their enterprise products at work, so I do understand the functionality that I don't have.

 

[Darician]

If it already has Workstation loaded on it, I would say use Workstation as it has more features than the Player.

 

[kado897]

What are you trying to do with the VM? Player is just a 'player'. No VM modifications made through Player.

This is incorrect. This "used" to be the way that VMWare Player worked, but VMWare changed this behavior with version 3.0 around a year ago and you can now create, modify, change VM's all you want.


VMware Workstation is the paid for product. It's more sophisticated than VMWare Player. The latest version of Workstation is $189. it allows more functionality like multiple network configurations on the host, snapshot capabilities on the VM's, etc

Personally if I had a paid for copy of Workstation, that is what I would use. But I've evaluated my needs and determined that I don't have a need to pay $189 for what I need from a VM at home. And I use their enterprise products at work, so I do understand the functionality that I don't have.

This is correct. player now has the facilities to create and modify VMs. It doesn't quite have all the facilities of VirtualBox, snapshots in particular, but is better integrated with windows.

 

[pparks1]

This is correct. player now has the facilities to create and modify VMs. It doesn't quite have all the facilities of VirtualBox, snapshots in particular, but is better integrated with windows.

While it misses some features like snapshots, vmware player offers other features that virtualbox doesn't like the ability to import and use XP Mode, vmware player offers "easy install" mode...which is well, easy, and vmware player has full Windows aero support. So, they both offer features and functions that make them unique and valuable.

 

[kado897]

That's why I will use both.

 

[kado897]

This is correct. player now has the facilities to create and modify VMs. It doesn't quite have all the facilities of VirtualBox, snapshots in particular, but is better integrated with windows.

While it misses some features like snapshots, vmware player offers other features that virtualbox doesn't like the ability to import and use XP Mode, vmware player offers "easy install" mode...which is well, easy, and vmware player has full Windows aero support. So, they both offer features and functions that make them unique and valuable.

Been doing some playing with the file backup feature in the paid version of Macrium Reflect. It make a good fist of doing base backups and incrementals. The compression ratio on the full backup is greater than 50% on high compression and the incrementals seem to backup only changed clusters not whole files. I know this is not the same as snapshots but it is better than nothing.