Why do you use a virtual machine?

[jimbo45]

Hi there

Yes -- but paying 250 USD for a piece of hardware in order to do this is really going against the spirit of the question - which was essentially to see given an OS-X install disk could you create a working Guest OS-X VM.

However Google is your friend here -- try some of these links - It doesn't seem as difficult as I originally thought -- of course you'll need a valid OS-X install disc.

I might have a go with this myself just for fun.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Antman]

So, So, So

My beautiful wife watches Filipino TV streamed out of Manila. These streams will only play in WiMP. The cost is 90% below the cost of the cable/satellite config necessary to watch the broadcast equivelant. The streams will not all run properly in Win7. Some will, some will not. Tech support blames lack of codec compatibility. To me that must mean that TFC (Filipino TV) is compressing different shows with various codecs, rather than all shows with the same codecs. Tech support says that nothing they stream will work in Win7. Whatever.

The DRM can only be registered on a single machine. My only current XP class machine at home is a P3 866 MHz w/256 RAM. I pulled it out of a dumpster. It works OK, as I have it configured much like a TV - it just goes to one website and only runs two non-TSR apps, IE7 and WiMP10. It is just so freaking slow.

So, I run VirtualXP. But guess what? The video playback absolutely sucks. Very choppy and AV sync issues. I will spend the next week learning all about this technological challenge.

So, I boot into XP. I'm there right now. She's watching the news on the 24 inch and I am preparing some legal documents and typing this on the 46 inch.

So, I just want to play on the PC while my beautiful wife watches her TFC. That's why.

 

[FreakyFerret]

I have a few uses for XP Mode. (Haven't tested yet though.)

We have a website we use that loads the IBM Host on Demand service. This page works fine if you use a single core processor machine. If you use a multi-core one, it locks up. Period. Our service provider has coded a new page with 1/2 of the functions we need that works in multi-core support though. So I'm sure the original page is just badly written. We've tried for months to get them to update it. No luck.
I'll use XP Mode (or VPC) to create a virtual machine using just 1 core. Hopefully this will make the machine appear as a single core unit and the main page will work again.

Also we have a few users who connect via Cisco VPN to another network. The admin of this site has decided when connected, the user's LAN capabilities go away. Since we use Roaming Profiles (w/Redirected Folders), this means our users can connect to the VPN, but when they do, they don't have access to any of their files anymore. :/ Using XP mode, I hope to have them use the virtual machine to connect to the VPN, leaving Win7 functional on the LAN. This way the XP machine will lose LAN services while maintaining the VPN in a window for the user. I know the RPC over HTTP won't work with this setup though, so it'll be full blown virtual window for them.

 

[LePoilu]

I use virtualization with VirtualBox, for testing purpose.

Having a direct acces to an old XP, a linux ubuntu/Debian.
Testing new OS (I always test in VM before hard installation)

I use it for offline configuration for my server.
The server run Debian R4, on the server run a VM with Windows Home Server.
I can test some config of Debian on a VM before managing the "real one", same for WHS.

Sometimes the VM with XP help me for desk support, when I need to remember how to do some tweak under XP as I din't use it since Vista.

But I never have to use it for compatibility issues at this time.

VM stuff is very helpfull for lot of thing.

 

[Stiffxiii]

I use Secure client from Checkpoint version 60, no go in win7

 

[s0me0ne]

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I use VMs a lot (one of my favorite topics)

I use VMs to:

1) test software, I install stuff, try it out, then uninstall it. That way I can see how good the software is, and if it uninstalls cleanly without screwing stuff up, then I decide whether to put it on my real machine
2) keep some non-essential apps on a vm instead of having 200 apps installed on my main machine, which can slow crap down (too many apps put things in your startup or task manager) I have different vms for different things (media editor vm, ...)
3) do development work, instead of crapping up my main machine with a apache/php and coldfusion dev envirnoments, I can have them seperate vms and run the servers and programs when I need to only
4) testing browsers, MS has some free xp vms for testing in ie6, 7 and 8, they expire after a few months of course

Some people use them for
1) to try different OSes out (linux, etc...)
2) old games

Take a look at the VMs on vmware's site and you'll get some more ideas on how to use them. VMs are much easier to deal with than another computer and KVM, plus you aren't wasting electricity having by another computer turned on.

 

[pparks1]

I use virtualization for practically anything

1). Learning how to install and configure software
2). Write documentation for work purposes for future installs and configs
3). Learning about things that typically require lots of hardware. For example, doing software RAID arrays and learning how to fail, replace and rebuild an array. This can easily be done, documented and used for training purposes
4). Setting up things like Microsoft Clustering services...which typically require shared storage, etc. With VM's, you can setup shared files and so forth and do the same thing which are great for learning purposes.
5). If I want to surf a website which might have questionable content than I can fire up a VM, and use the browser then instead and keep my primary machine safe.
6). Testing is so much faster in a VM. Reboots happen almost immediately...and if you have ever used true server class hardware...sometimes the POST process itself can take up to 2 minutes before the OS even starts to load.

 

[mckillwashere]

Running different os dependent appliactions, such as OpenVpn. And my MySql server so its not on my main os.

 

[s0me0ne]

I just thought of another reason. You can use old hardware devices instead of having to upgrade to a new OS if the old hardware doesnt have drivers for newer OSes.

I have an old HP scanner from 99 that only has OCR software for XP or lower. So I'll probably have to setup a VM if I ever need OCR support (rarely used it, but could come in handy sometime). Beats buying a new scanner. I'm sure this could save some people from having to buy a new printer or something also.

 

[mckillwashere]

@s0me0ne
In regards to your post.
Respectfully It makes little sense.

You can use old hardware devices instead of having to upgrade to a new OS if the old hardware doesnt have drivers for newer OSes.

( Did you mean "having to upgrade to a new device if the old hardware"?)

Are you saying run the old OS nativity and use the newer OS as a guest? Or the other way around?(New os native and the older OS as a guest.)
Most of the older hardware has generic drivers for them. Mainly its just newer devices made within the past 2-3 years that has issues(At least from my older hardware). If im not mistaken XP had OCR built in, cause I used to have an old 95 printer plugged it into the LPT port rebooted. Scanned something and it output a text document instead of an image. If that was the case im sure vista and 7 have it built in to, if not there should be a freeware out there some place.

 

[s0me0ne]

I mean using a new os native and the older os as a guest. I'll admit I haven't tested for OCR support in XP, but I just realized the software for my HP scanner used a third party plugin for OCR support.

I may have jumped the gun, but I also read something on slashdot recently about a person that had an old printer and he couldn't get new drivers for it to run on newer OSes (windows), so I thought this might be another good reason for a VM.