My friend Jeremy left a comment on an earlier post I made regarding  Virtualization Software. I had just downloaded VMware Workstation 6.5 for Linux and thought the Unity Mode sounded like something I could really use. I really don’t use Windows all that often these days but Visio is one thing I still need. Since we use Exchange 2007 for mail, I just use Thunderbird and every so often OWA for calendaring and contact stuff. I also have a Motorola Q9 which acts as my central calendaring piece.

But Jeremy mentioned in the comment that I should give VirtualBox a try. So I did. In all fairness, I have VirtualBox with XP SP3 and VMware 2.5 Player with Server 2003. In my completely unofficial test; VirtualBox beats the pants off VMware Player. Both have a seamless or unity mode feature; but VirtualBox seems to actually want to run on my Thinkpad T43 with 1.5g of memory while VMware Player seems to struggle.

I think VMware has tried to do too much with too much bloat. it just feels all syrupy slow and loaded with a unity mode which really makes it not useful. My advice, VMware, is to lose the menu thing on top which lets you find menus or whatever. Instead try the lower in fuel VirtualBox method and just let us launch from the Windows Taskbar. Secondly, take a look at the memory use here.

All that being said, I’m still a VMWare Server and ESXi afficianado. Server must be the 1.0.x release though. The 2.0 server seems awkward and all webified. ESXi just rocks but Linux desktoppers need a VI client.

I’d say for lightweight desktop virtualization, it does not get much better than VirtualBox.