This guy actually isn’t drunk. He’s just a graduate of West Middlesex High School and a big fan of The Sopranos.
Today I’ve been playing a lot with virtual machines and specifically, Sun’s free, open source VirtualBox host software. I have used virtual machines for years (since around 2001) and even bought licenses for several versions of Microsoft Virtual PC on the Mac, VMware Workstation for Windows, and VMware Fusion for Mac. I’ve also used licensed versions of Parallels, and have used CrossOver (a Wine-implemetation on Mac OS X that lets you run Windows-based applications, mostly games, on Mac OS X.
My early attempts at virtualization worked really well. I ran older Windows versions on my Windows XP machine in order to document, using screenshots, the install process to put together a handbook for my high school’s IT department. However, soon after that was done, I had no need for virtual machines. In college, I was majoring in computer science, and had an Apple PowerBook G4. I needed to run certain Windows operating systems, most memorable a beta of Longhorn (before the code reset), so I had to use Virtual PC. It was painfully slow. Then, after years of regular use, I phased out my need for Windows, and so I no longer needed a virtual machine.
Finally, when I started doing IT work, I needed virtual machines again. Our company, Team Spearfish, did both technology and creative work, and so we standardized on Intel-based Macs since they ran the creative software, such as Final Cut Pro, that we used. We ran Windows in virtual machines, Parallels at the time and later VMware Fusion, so we could quickly access a Windows operating system to guide a customer through support or to use a Windows-specific application without rebooting into a different operating system, which took a lot of time and was really inconvenient.
Just a few months ago I decided to give Sun VirtualBox a try. I had heard great things about it, and it was a free download on Sun’s website. I’m a big fan of Sun’s hardware and software, and will always have a soft spot on my heart for Solaris and the Java Communications Suite, so I trusted their virtual machine solution. It was a good decision on my part. VirtualBox is amazing. It’s fast, it doesn’t use very many system resources, and it supports a wide variety of guest operating systems. And, it’s free.
If anyone out there wants to give virtual machines a try, and doesn’t want to pay for software, and doesn’t want to install something that’ll muck up their computer with a bunch of proprietary drivers and things that load on startup, VirtualBox is the way to go.
