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VMware Player - a Windows 8 Demo
You may have considered to run an OS (e.g., Windows 8) in virtual but were not sure how that would really work. I will show you in this video how Windows 8 can be operated in a VMware Player virtual system.
For installation of Windows 8 in VMware Player, refer to this excellent tutorial from Shawn. This will allow you to install Windows 8 virtual within your current system. It creates a VMware folder in Documents (default). You can move or copy this VMware folder to another partition or disk drive any time. You just have to redefine the path to the .vmx file (see tutorial below). You can also copy that folder at any time for backup purposes. That would be equivalent to an image, but is more convenient.
I went one step further and copied the VMware folder (and thereby the virtual system) to an external disk attached via USB and I am running Windows 8 from there. Here is a tutorial I made that shows the steps to do that. The advantage of having your Windows 8 virtual system on an external disk is that you can carry it to any PC and it will run. It is completely isolated from the hardware differences because VMware Player became the host system. That is also why there is no problem with activation. The initial activation was for VMware Player, not for a specific PC.
Now let's have a look at the actual operation. My screen recording program is not perfect, so there may be a few quirks during the recording (e.g., it will not show my Windows 7 Rocket Dock, but it shows the Windows 8 Rocket Dock - go figure). That should not really impact the demo though. The performance would probably be even faster if ran from the internal disk, but given the setup, I think it performs very well.
Note: If you have a problem with the loudness of the sound output of the video, check the "Loudness Equalization" box in your Playback device. It is under the 'Enhancements' tab.
Last edited by whs; 10 Feb 2013 at 12:40.