PCA Forums

Just came from a LAN party this weekend (Lot's of GREAT MOHAA LAN action BTW!) and met a software developer there who showed me a VERY interesting application.

Check it out here: http://www.vmware.com

It allows you to run SEVERAL independent OSes under a Windows (or Linux) session, in completely independent virtual computers (each session even boots up with it's own seperate virtual motherboard BIOS) and all sessions can communicate with each other or the host OS via a virtual network bridge.

VERY cool.

Guy sitting next to me at the party WinXP Server running in a window under Win2K Pro. Also had Win95 and Mandrake setup to do the same.

You can run several virtual computers at the same time and have them all communicate with each other over the virtual network.

He recommends a LOT of RAM. 512Mb minimum - 1 Gig preferrably.

Yeah it is cool. I run it at work; Win2k with Win98 running virtual. I came across it a couple of years ago when my wife needed to run a Windows app and I only had Linux boxes in the house. Couldn't get her app to work with WINE, so VMWare made a nice alternative.

Very nice, no hassle with partitioning or multiboot ... but maybe a lil high price for the casual PC user at $299 so it's really more something when you need it at work (and your boss pays for it).

I like it ok. It seems to work better if you boot a windows OS from Linux.

When I ran Mandrake in a window on 2k, it wasn't too great. Seemed kinda laggy.