Which one would you choose?

Due to the fact that the virtual machine management software introduces an abstraction layer between the guest operating system and the hardware, there is undoubtedly some performance loss. But it is nowhere near as dramatic as you might think.

And with a low performance overhead and today’s ridiculously overspecified hardware you are unlikely to notice any material performance degradation, although lots of memory is a good idea.

For example I run Windows 7 as the host operating system with 1x Win XP x64 and 1x Win XP Pro guests active all the time, and the two former typically always working at load. I also have a couple of Ubuntu VMs configured that I can launch without any noticeable sluggishness anywhere. This all on a now somewhat dated quad core Xenon with 16gb of ram.

There is plenty of info about virtualisation on the VMware website; I suggest you go there to have a look around. Much better you should register yourself and download an always free copy of VMware server and have a play around with it, for example install a Ubuntu VM to get a feel for how everything works. It is really very simple indeed and you will have ample resources assuming you have a dual core machine.

I am using Server on my personal PC right now, but my business systems have recently been moved to a new machine with VMware workstation, as I will do when I get around to it. The advantage of this is that whereas Server fully reserves memory allocated to guests in the host operating system, Workstation frees up unused guest memory and makes it available to the overall system, as well as supposedly providing slightly better performance. As such I would use that if your new machine ‘only’ has 8gb and you use heavy applications like Photoshop.

There’s one other point; virtualisation is available in 2 flavours; one known as a “bare metal” system and the other not. With bare metal, the management software sits directly on top of the hardware, whereas in the other case it is installed under an existing host operating system. Both Server and Workstation fall under this camp, so if you want to try and then get rid of it is a simple matter to deinstall.

Thank you Shaky, the bare metal thing is interesting, does that mean you don't need to run the host OS but can solely run the virtualisation?
Will have a look at the VMware site.

I've looked for more screen information and have found it off the Macbook Pro 17 and dell XPS 16 RGBled.
Here is the information.

Macbook Pro 17
Maximum: 312 cd/m²
Average: 292.7 cd/m²
Illumination: 86 %
Black: 0.43 cd/m²
Contrast: 726:1
Brightness on battery: 312 cd/m²

Dell XPS 16 RGBLED
Maximum: 268 cd/m²
Average: 232.1 cd/m²
Illumination: 81 %
Black: 0.55 cd/m²
Contrast: 487:1

HP Envy
Maximum: 292 cd/m²
Average: 263.1 cd/m²
Illumination: 80 %
Black: 0.29 cd/m²
Contrast: 852:1
Brightness on battery: 247 cd/m²

sRGB, MBP17 is transparent grey



sRGB, XPS 16 RGBLED is transparent grey.



aRGB, XPS 16 RGBLED is transparent grey.



MBP17, XPS 16 RGBLED is transparent grey.



sRGB, HP envy is transparent grey.



MBP 17, HP envy is transparent grey.




Does anybody know how important contrast is compared to the gamut?
The Dell have less contrast so can I say that the screen will look more greyish compared to the other two?

I'd say that gamut is more important than contrast. Then again, I use S-IPS screens, so I'm biased...

This article is always good for a read about the marketing myths about displays - particularly contrast ratios, which have gone up to being quoted at about 1 billion : 1 without actually any better...

Yes, but these are intended for more substantial, professionally managed server set-ups, with the software and tools priced accordingly and also at a completely different level of complexity.

However, both Workstation and Server run under Linux giving you some of the reliability and slimline benefits of a bare metal system. You could run that as your host OS then a Win 7 VM as your main desktop environment (or OS X for that matter), with full Aero support under Workstation.

In fact this is what I want to move towards personally, the big advantage being that the VMs are easy to backup and are completely portable between hardware configurations, assuming a minimum number of processor cores and memory.

Thank you Flossie I'm sure the XPS 16 display is more than acceptable but was curious what the impact off contrast matters.

The contrast I quoted are not from what the manufactures but what reviewers found to be so these are true contrast values so to say, the difference between the brightness white and the darkest black.
As you can see the Envy has almost twice the contrast as the XPS and that's because the black level of the Envy is almost half of that than the XPS while brightness is roughly the same.

I'm curious if that means that the Dell is capable of displaying a wide gamut but not a great difference between the colours?
This getting really complicated

That's really good and interesting, will surely give it a try when I get a laptop.

How do you deal with the differences in file systems, Windows use NTfS and Apple HFS so it would be hard to share the same information across systems or not?

I don't know about Apple but in Linux there is a utility called Samba that allows you to set up network shares, permissions, etc. I would have thought there is something similar under OSX.

I mean how do you share things like photos and videos across the OS?

I would like to have an drive all the OS can have excess to so they can open files there.
Most support FAT I think but that has a file limit of 4GB and that's not larger enough sometimes
I wonder if you know a way around it?

Well they certainly all support NTFS where the file size limit is not practically relevant. Just make sure you have a large hard disk allocated to a Windows 7 VM that you can then use for shared data folders.

Alternatively my Ubuntu VMs are ‘formatted’ in Ext4, where shares are certainly visible to Windows.

VMware Workstation also allows for full drag and drop of files between guests, and although I don’t have much experience of using this for now it probably does other more fancy things too.

Everything is highly flexible, and you can easily alter your data setup as you go along. Just make sure you maintain a reasonably current backup, for example on your existing desktop.

Super, I was worried about nothing

As chance would have it Lifehacker today has a guide to virtualisation here:
http://lifehacker.com/5623313/how-to-run-windows-mac-and-linux-side-by-side-and-...+free-with-virtualbox?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lifehacker%2Ffull+%28Lifehacker%29

This gives a good overview of the features and benefits of virtualisation with their example using Sun’s free Virtual Box. This has been receiving glowing reports of late, although I understand it remains a little behind the industry leader VMware.

However, now that Oracle have acquired Sun, I would not put my eggs into that basket; Larry Ellison is is a very nice guy but I personally wouldn’t trust him further then I could throw him.

I run an old acer aspire 5100 with ubuntu 10.04.

its fast and all the software is free.

easy!!!!!

Well, not exactly. The only warranty that is "demanded" by law is 6 months.
After that there is the regulation that a device should work without problems for a reasonable time. For a laptop you could argue that it should work for at least 3 years. For a washing machine you expect at least 6 or 7 years.

you sure I thought 2 years?

With the rest that's indeed right, I got a list with which was expectable. For a normal notebook it was 2 years and a high-end one 3 years as far as I remember.

We'll I've played with the Mac.
I went to the city centre a monday to get a camera filter (you see I'm not so indecisive with everything, it's only computers ) but they need to ordered it and it was in today and to my surprise found an I'am Store a long the way
Played with the Mac for a long time and compared the several screens.

I really don't know what to think off it.
The build quality and the screen looked all really good but the Dell studio was on the same level to my feeling.
The OS... I'm a windows user and therefore not used to the Mac at all and didn't like it in the short time I've played with it but that might change when using it more.
If I would spend €1800 now I would play it safe and get a laptop.

I've till February to decide and new AMD and Intel processors are on the horizon and nVidia have new graphics cards and AMD new ones will also come this year I believe... so yes I'll wait because I've that option.