What’s it do? Reviewer 1: Yes. This is a very competent application. I installed 2 operating systems and although there were some glitches, I was impressed by the ease of how it handles these virtual workstations. I could do anything on the workstation that I could do on my normal PC, albeit slower. Reviewer 2: VMWare Workstation allows you to run one or more virtual computers inside of your existing computer. The virtual computer has to be set up the same way as a physical computer; you have to install your operating system and programs . VMWare uses special drivers to trick the virtual computer’s operating system into treating memory as if it were a hard disk, and into reading .iso files as if they were a real CD. The main advantage to this virtual setup as I see it is that it allows you to set up and run operating systems and programs in your computer in a safe environment where viruses, spyware, corruption, and other problems go away for good when the virtual machine is reset or removed. My experience is that this program delivered fully on what was promised, and that the learning curve to get there was fairly steep. If you do not need all of the features and control which this program provides, VMWare has other less complex and less expensive alternatives in the same family of programs. Reviewer 3: Yes, it did so, in a straightforward fashion for everything I tried, restricted only by lacking circumstances such as no multiple-station network, and limitations to my knowledge. This program was fun to test and explore as well as easy to maneuver.
Reviewer 4:
Yes. it does. Once you have installed the program, the
first thing you will do is to “Create a New Machine.” You will select an
OS (Operating System) from a drop-down window, for example: Win XP Pro.
The program will then set aside a certain portion of your hard-drive,
where it will store all it needs to know about your “New Computer”. My
“New Computer” came with a Hard Drive, a CD-ROM, a floppy drive, a network
connection, a USB controller, an audio device and a CPU. And just like a
new computer, it has to have an OS installed on its hard drive (called the
“Guest OS”). So you put the Win XP Pro setup disk in the CD-Rom drive, and
install Windows. Once that process has been completed, you have a new Win
XP Pro “Guest Computer”. It is completely isolated from your Real computer
(called the “Host”), because once you shut it down, and exit from the
VMWare Workstation program, all that you did while you were using your
“guest” machine is shut down at the same time. I now have Win XP Pro, Win
XP Home and Win 98 installed. VMWare Workstation also supports other
Windows systems, including server versions. However, you are not limited
to MS Operating systems. VMWare Workstation supports a number of Linux
systems, and Solaris. I have installed one of the Linux systems (Mandriva)
on the same host computer as the others. Once you have your OS set up,
you can install software, surf the net, run applications, etc., just as
you now do with your computer. If anything goes wrong while experimenting
with one program or another, it will have no effect at all on anything
else the computer is used for. If things go really askew, simply delete
that Virtual Computer, and set up a replacement. Reviewer 1: Both yes and no. The first program installation went like a breeze, but that’s just the shell. Then you have to install the operating systems and that wasn’t as easy. There was no “Quick Start” help file, which was a real drawback, because installing the OS wasn’t very intuitive. But after looking around the knowledge base on the Web site, I found the answer to my problems and the rest of the installation went smoothly. In my case VM did not recognize both my CD/DVD drives and since it was set to automatic detection, the detection became well, “unautomatic” I manually set it to one of the drives and things started working again. Again, I found this in the knowledge base but both of these problems should be in a start-up troubleshooting guide. This is not an application for the computer novice. You have to have some experience installing operating systems and you can’t be afraid of trying out different parameters and solutions. Printing out the manual beforehand would be a good idea, because a lot is covered here that you wonder about as you’re both installing and using the application. But still, a quick start file would be nice. Reviewer 2: Installation was smooth but it took longer than for most other programs. I would estimate that it took 3-4 minutes to test, load, and configure all files. The program checks for updates automatically and installation of the updates over the pre-existing installations was smooth. Reviewer 3: Installation was easy and uneventful. Understandably, for a program with so many capabilities, it is a large download. Also you must register to obtain download of the 30-day trial. Otherwise, download and installation were a breeze. Update installations also were simple “piggy-back” procedures.
Reviewer 4:
The download of the software is large: 86.2 Mb. I installed
VMWare Workstation to its default settings, both for the location of the
program files and for the shortcuts. It suggested that I shut off the
“autorun” feature on the CD drive, which I did. The installation took
quite long, compared to most other software that I install (about five
minutes on a Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM). Entering the serial number
completes the installation. Updates are obtained from the Web site. I had
to register on the site, using the serial number to log in, before being
able to download the upgrade. I downloaded a complete new 95 Mb file,
which I then installed. The reinstallation was completely done by the
program itself. It uninstalled the old version, and installed the new one.
All my previous settings, preferences and so on were found and preserved.
The End User License Agreement ( EULA) specifies that a single license can
be used for one computer only. Limited technical support is provided only
for 30 days after purchase of licence. After that, you would need to
purchase the support service. Reviewer 1: You have here a complete virtual environment that you can use to test things out and if you screw up, you don’t injure your normal operating environment. But, since you’re working with a real operating system in a virtual environment, if you ruin your system files, you have to reinstall anyway and have to reactivate, etc. Copy and paste between PC and Virtual PC was good! Unfortunately, there is no possibility of copying and pasting between virtual systems. When I wrote to support to resolve a problem with my printer driver, they replied almost immediately. They gave me clear instructions on how to save and send log files both from VMware and Windows. When I delayed doing this for one day, they even sent me a reminder. It is evident that VMware has a good process for the support function and incident management with quick response times. Reviewer 2: Despite reading in the instruction manuals of complications of setting up an operating system, the VMware Wizard guides you logically and through the process of setting up your virtual machine. It asks a series questions about your system which should be known to a moderately experienced user. Recommendations about preferred settings are clearly given. Clarifications about settings I was unsure about were found in the “Guest Operating System Install Guide”. The program did a good job of automatically detecting the hardware on my system and installing the drivers needed to establish the Virtual Machine. Bridging of the virtual network with my real world network worked seamlessly; after configuration of SUSE Linux 10.1, I was able to connect immediately to the internet with no additional configuration settings. Once your Virtual Machine is up and running, you can have an independent operating system and programs running in a separate window alongside of your native operating system. You can be running other Windows programs in other windows while your guest operating system is running independently in another. The Virtual Machine can be set to run in complete isolation from the rest of your system, or you can enable copy and paste functions between the systems. This program is highly customizable, allowing you to set parameters and permissions to your liking. You can take a “snapshot” to capture the current configuration in the Virtual Machine, or you can “clone” the Virtual Machine so you can run a duplicate of it on your computer or a different computer. I did not get so far into the program to test this, but there is even the capability to set up “Teams” of Virtual Machines which can be linked together to work on tasks. Updates are checked for automatically. Purchase of this program entitles the user to 18 months of free updates. Upgrades for existing users, from version 5.5 to 6.0 for example, would cost $129 which compares to the full purchase price of $199. Reviewer 3: Workstation (WS) seems to have covered all the bases for my needs and vast majority of others. WS can act as a dual-boot system and you can assign resources as you wish through partitioning. There is no need for a separate partitioning program. The snapshots feature allows the user to take and recall as many snapshots as space allows. The snapshot utility allowed me view the snaps in a tree format, and after examination I saw able to call up and even transfer shots of changes, changes to subchanges, subchanges to subchanges, etc. It was great for cloning/emulation needs Linux is supported as well as Windows. The version used must match the home OS, but can support other OS in a guest environment. WS 5.5. is compatible with Windows 2000 and up only, but for the guest account, it supports windows 9x and above. Tip screens were very helpful but can be easily disabled. The ability to create a totally independent testing environment, with absolutely no modifications to the home OS and the registry is critically important to me. And was the real beauty of this program.The current 64-bit support should be sufficient to meet forseeable future development. I can only characterize the usability and performance of this program as excellent. Additionally the support provided in the help section and particularly home support are outstanding. I had some snags early on in the learning process, and the folks at VMWare were timely, accurate and delivered in an understandable fashion. And, they did not try to blame some other software for a collision. Reviewer 4: This is the most professionally designed software program that I have evaluated since joining the panel. The visual design and layout is business-like and functional. The steps to follow are logically organized, and clear. Extensive help is available for every step and function in the program. Not only do you have the help built into the program, but the Web site has comprehensive documentation, not only for the program itself, but for every one of the “supported” operating systems. I have installed and run different kinds of software on the virtual computers. They operated as you would expect them to, as they would run on a “real” computer. Any difficulties that I have encountered with any of the programs have turned out to be issues with the software, rather than with VMWare Workstation. For example, I was not able to use my printer at the beginning. However, VMWare Workstation creates files in the directory of each Virtual Machine that can be used to troubleshoot issues. Now, not only will I be able to test tricky programs safely, but I will be able to test them out in different Windows operating systems, and even, perhaps in Linux. The support is outstanding. I found the Community Forum to be an excellent resource. It is an active and busy forum, with a very large user base. Many people are willing to answer even the most elementary questions. I asked a number of questions about different aspects of the program, and was always answered within the hour.. All the questions that I raised were answered there, so I never had to go directly to the technical support itself. Weak Points. Reviewer 1: In XP my OS crashed with a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) a number of times when using the printer and original Canon driver. I couldn’t get it to work in XP. The mouse cursor is constrained to the window in the beginning, but after changing it to cover the whole screen, there was no problem switching between operating systems. For some reason, I couldn’t change it back to default . I found VM to be very slow. I couldn’t find a way to increase the size of the partition, so I had a lot of hard disk swapping, even though I had plenty of space when installing and accepted the size offered me by the installation. I would recommend increasing the size of the partition from the very beginning. A note on this in a quick-start file would be nice. I couldn’t get my printer to work. XP (virtual) crashed with BSOD every time I switched from PC printer to Vmware printer. Once I had to completely reinstall the printer driver on the PC, too. It seems that the virtual machine can’t cope in some cases with USB2.0 and must use the slower 1.1. After plugging the printer into a slower port, it worked well. Future versions should improve one USB 2.0 compatibility. The application is slow in starting XP. Some of the common issues and workarounds should be published in a more user-friendly fashion for instance in a FAQ. The knowledge based search is too time-consuming. Reviewer 2: While setup of a guest operating system on a virtual machine is supported by detailed instructions, it is important to read and follow those instructions carefully. I tried installing SuSe Linux 10.1 intuitively and found myself at dead ends. (The good news is that if things go wrong, you can just delete the Virtual Machine and start over fresh!) When I followed the detailed operating system installation instructions from VMWare, the application installed smoothly. I found the installation instructions a bit difficult to follow in a step-by-step fashion. They have a tendency to tell you to do something in general terms and then give you the details of how to do it later. I found myself reading a paragraph with general instructions and being stuck, not knowing what to do before proceeding. It wasn’t until I gave up and moved on to the next paragraph that I found the detailed instructions which were needed to have it all made sense. In my case, the complexity was compounded because I was installing an operating system which was new to me, so I had to decipher the instructions about VMWare Workstation AND how they were executed in SUSE Linux. I would suggest to the developers that they add more “pointers” in their instructions; e.g., the problem I described above would have been avoided if the general instructions paragraph had begun with the phrase “as detailed in the next paragraph”. Reviewer 3: just once while attempting to forward a snapshot, the system hung. This never recurred. Some portions of the manual required me to repeat the reading, but it may be due to my limitations, not those of the manual. Other than these very minor items, I found no weaknesses.
Reviewer 4:
Even though the program works very well, I would have found
it helpful to have an optional running commentary of hints to go along
with the process of creating my first guest OS. For example, when you are
booting into a virtual computer, the VMWare Workstation screen comes up,
as it would on any physical machine. If you wish to go into the BIOS
setup, or call up the Boot menu, there are keystrokes that you must press
at that moment. For VMWare Workstation, it is F2 for setup, and Esc for
the Boot Menu. The first time that I tried to install an operating
system, I would press the Esc key so that I could go into the boot menu,
then direct the computer to the CD-ROM drive. I went through this a number
of times with no success. The program was not recognizing my keystrokes,
and the mouse didn’t work. Eventually, I found out that you must first
click on any part of that screen with the mouse, which releases control of
the computer over to the VMWare Workstation program, which will then
recognize the keystrokes from the keyboard. Reviewer 1: This is a very sleek solution. Why I haven’t used this before is beyond me. The procedure for getting support is quite complicated with a ticket number, long form to fill out, etc. The 30-day free support with license is not long enough . Reviewer 2: This is the most robust virtual machine package that VMWare has. It gives you the most control over the settings and is the most feature-rich. Notably, at the time of my research, this was the only virtual machine software which provides audio support. The price that you pay is that you have to spend the time and effort to configure each virtual machine’s settings and install and configure its operating system and programs. If you would like to get an operating system running inside a Virtual Machine more quickly and simply, but with less control, you can download VMWare’s Virtual Player and then a Virtual Appliance which is a pre-configured Virtual Machine with an operating system installed. The virtual machine(s) will be set up in dedicated sections of your existing internal or external disks. Therefore, it is important that you have adequate free space on your system to allow the extra space to be dedicated to your virtual machine(s). The more space you can provide for them, the more robust your machines can be. You are cautioned in the instructions that you need to change your native operating system so that autorun of your CD/DVD player is disabled, and that hibernation is not done until the Virtual Machine is not actively running. The following is more of a reflection of the nature of computers and licensing than of VMWare Workstation: you need to own the rights to a separate software license for every virtual machine which you run it on. This means that even if you are running a legitimate copy of Windows XP, for example, you need a separate license to run a new instance of it on a virtual machine. Also, some OEM versions of operating systems have proprietary drivers and will not run properly in the virtual environment. I did not want to spend the $200-$300 for a new copy of Windows XP Pro, so I chose this review as a chance to experiment with SUSE Linux 10.1 Reviewer 3: This is a fairly expensive item for home use, but it's expense is fair. So much is offered. I recommend at least try the 30-day trial. WS recommends that one have at least a 500 MHz processor, 256MB ram, and 1 GB of free disk space. This seems overly conservative and optimistic. While this may remotely be true, given OS memory requirements in particular, you should consider upgrading each aspect. WS will provide free updates for 18 months, but i couldn't find the word “free” next to “upgrade” anywhere. While this is not unusual at all, an unwary reader might assume that upgrades (if any) too are free for that period. Education discounts are available too. This program is a valuable tool, and the support staff is not only good to work with, but also solicit suggestions for improvements.
Reviewer 4:
This is not a program for computer novices. It is a complex
and sophisticated piece of software designed primarily for the testing
environment. However, its use has expanded beyond that, and although this
is perhaps beyond the scope of this review, I found this clip from a news
release to be interesting: Virtualization allows multiple applications
to run concurrently on computing equipment, thereby enabling customers to
consolidate their data centers and remove a large portion of their
existing servers. You can find references to this concept on the Web
site, and to other ways in which VMWare Workstation is being used. You can
get an idea of what the program looks like by downloading and installing
the VMWare Player. One free application that you can install is the
“Browser Appliance”. This will allow you to surf the Internet with
Firefox, and do all the things that you could do with the VMWare
Workstation itself, while on the Internet. If you are unfortunate enough
to pick up any nasty mal-ware items as you surf, they could well “infect”
your virtual computer, but will not, in any way, have any influence on
your host computer. Reviewer 1: Unequivocally, yes. Although when I get the time, I would like to reinstall it and make a bigger partition for the operating systems. This is too good a program to stop using, just because I have a few problems. I can heartily recommend the program, although this is not a program for a computer novice. Installing and using the program places certain demands on both software and hardware experience. Reviewer 2. Yes. Reviewer 3. Yes, a definite keeper. Reviewer 4: Yes, definitely. Not only is it useful, but it is a lot of fun.
|
