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besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 03:18 PM

My Windows needs are light at best, so I realize that my needs might be far more basic than many, but what sort of compelling reasons are there to buy VMWare or Parallels over downloading Virtualbox? The only ones I'm aware of is the VMWare Unity feature, and VMWare Direct3d support (Parallels may have something similar). Is that it?

It may have been a RAM limitation issue, but I actually found VirtualBox faster than VMWare on the machine I tried it on. The VirtualBox interface seems clean and straight forward, seems to work well.

Is part of this mindshare, or are there really compelling reasons to buy VMWare or Parallels other than what I've already accounted for?

alex_kac · Nov 4, 2007, 03:34 PM

Reliability, support, features (USB). I do ROM updates of mobile devices over USB. VMWare is reliable to do this with. The amount of features available with it (many hidden) overwhelm what Virtualbox contains.

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 4, 2007, 04:32 PM

Isn't VirtualBox just a frontend to QEMU?

I'd rather use

Q - [kju:]

C.A.T.S. CEO · Nov 4, 2007, 04:44 PM

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob

Isn't VirtualBox just a frontend to QEMU?

I'd rather use

Q - [kju:]

No, its a full virtualization app, Q (or QEMU) is a elumanator (I can't spell it, sorry).

shinji · Nov 4, 2007, 04:45 PM

I had already paid by the time I found out about Virtualbox, and it's also still in beta isn't it?

shinji · Nov 4, 2007, 04:45 PM

elumanator lol

King Bob On The Cob · Nov 4, 2007, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by C.A.T.S. CEO

No, its a full virtualization app, Q (or QEMU) is a elumanator (I can't spell it, sorry).

No, Q does Virtualization too.

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 05:00 PM

Originally Posted by C.A.T.S. CEO

No, its a full virtualization app, Q (or QEMU) is a elumanator (I can't spell it, sorry).

QEmu also does virtualization, I believe...

Elumanator... How George Bushian!

Yes, Virtualbox is based on QEmu.. Q looks pretty good, I might try that too.

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 05:00 PM

Originally Posted by shinji

I had already paid by the time I found out about Virtualbox, and it's also still in beta isn't it?

Yeah, but I've found it to be quite stable...

Faust · Nov 4, 2007, 05:56 PM

I only use Windows to test sites in IE.

I bought Parallels about a year ago because I didn't know about VirtualBox then. That's the only reason I'm using it.

Chuckit · Nov 4, 2007, 06:46 PM

VirtualBox is FOSS and thus ****.

Scarpa · Nov 4, 2007, 06:49 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

VirtualBox is FOSS and thus ****.

Did the sarcasm go over my head there?

Anyway, to besson, does Virtualbox support "seamless" windows apps like parallels does? I'm not really familiar with any of the products but a guy at my work runs Outlook and Visio in parallels but they exist in their own mac os windows and show up in the dock, etc.. I'm interested for that feature along but really in most cases I can just RDP to a windows machine if I need a windows app.

Chuckit · Nov 4, 2007, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by Scarpa

Did the sarcasm go over my head there?

No, just my standard reply to a "Hey guys, why are you losers buying programs? There's FOSS software out there! It's free! And open-source!" thread. Most of the time it's correct.

MacosNerd · Nov 4, 2007, 07:04 PM

I bought Vmware because of the reputation of support, the stability of the product and general peace of mind that it will be a supported product. virtualbox wasn't out (at least I hadn't heard about it) when I purchased fusion.

The same question could be said for Linux; why buy an OS when you can download one free (and legal). Fusion has a great track record, the company has an even better track record, and a great reputation for support. An open sourced product cannot compete in those areas and since on occasions I find myself working round the clock to perform server/application upgrades I want a product that is the most stable. I really don't want to have the environment crash on me at 3:00am and having to figure out why the virtualization application is crashing.

For me Fusion has not crashed and just works - that's a great peace of mind

mfbernstein · Nov 4, 2007, 09:17 PM

Try running Dragon Naturally Speaking under VirtualBox. Not so much fun (or use). Parallels and especially Fusion offer very good compatibility with fancier apps.

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by Scarpa

Did the sarcasm go over my head there?

Anyway, to besson, does Virtualbox support "seamless" windows apps like parallels does? I'm not really familiar with any of the products but a guy at my work runs Outlook and Visio in parallels but they exist in their own mac os windows and show up in the dock, etc.. I'm interested for that feature along but really in most cases I can just RDP to a windows machine if I need a windows app.

The Linux version of Virtualbox supports seamless windows, but the Mac version does not yet. This is about the only VMWare feature I miss, although for me personally it is not worth $80 for the little bit of work I do in Windows (i.e. testing out sites, writing up guides for Windows email clients)...

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

No, just my standard reply to a "Hey guys, why are you losers buying programs? There's FOSS software out there! It's free! And open-source!" thread. Most of the time it's correct.

Wow, right out of the Zimphire playbook...

I'm really not anti commercial software, I use many commercial apps. I'm far more zealous about open source protocols than I am OSS. I just go on a lot about OSS because these apps generally aren't marketed and well known to many Mac users. Sometimes the ports are weak, many of them are better under Linux (Virtualbox being an example). However, when they do mature on the Mac side they often seem to go unnoticed.

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 11:03 PM

Originally Posted by MacosNerd

I bought Vmware because of the reputation of support, the stability of the product and general peace of mind that it will be a supported product. virtualbox wasn't out (at least I hadn't heard about it) when I purchased fusion.

The same question could be said for Linux; why buy an OS when you can download one free (and legal). Fusion has a great track record, the company has an even better track record, and a great reputation for support. An open sourced product cannot compete in those areas and since on occasions I find myself working round the clock to perform server/application upgrades I want a product that is the most stable. I really don't want to have the environment crash on me at 3:00am and having to figure out why the virtualization application is crashing.

For me Fusion has not crashed and just works - that's a great peace of mind

I disagree strongly with your generalization. What about Apache? What about MySQL or PostgreSQL? What about Xen? The list goes on and on... These products have great support, reliability, and in many cases work as good or better than their commercial competitors.

There is nothing inherent in OSS that makes it weaker than commercial offerings.

thunderous_funker · Nov 4, 2007, 11:13 PM

Bootcamp.

Parallels works with my existing Bootcamp windows partition.

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 11:14 PM

Originally Posted by thunderous_funker

Bootcamp.

Parallels works with my existing Bootcamp windows partition.

Ahhhh.... good point. VMWare does too. I wasn't thinking about that feature either. If you are low on disk space on a laptop and/or juggle back and forth between the two, this would be important, me thinks...

Chuckit · Nov 5, 2007, 01:57 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Wow, right out of the Zimphire playbook...

I don't know; I think my being right makes pretty big difference.

Originally Posted by besson3c

However, when they do mature on the Mac side they often seem to go unnoticed.

I'm sure there's some good product in every category, but the utter mass of crap under the same banner makes many people rightly distrust it. Calling attention to more software that hasn't earned a good rep won't help the problem. Besides that, many people prefer products that somebody really takes responsibility for and properly supports to one whose entire Help section on its Web site reads "Page TracGuide not found."

MacosNerd · Nov 5, 2007, 06:58 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I disagree strongly with your generalization. ...

Fair enough you are correct in the generalization that I made, however in virtualbox's case there is a lack of a track record, and the product is still in beta. And as I mentioned the support issue. I think average users and people who cannot afford to have problems look towards a commercial product like fusion..

While you noted a number of open source success stories there are others that have failed. Being open sourced is not a guarantee of success and with two well establish vendors (parallels & fusion) virtual box will have its handful trying to persuade users to use their product.

As I noted for me, I need peace of mind, that the virtualization product that I use will work. I’ve tried both parallels and fusion and for my needs I’ve found fusion to be the best product.

besson3c · Nov 5, 2007, 08:22 AM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I don't know; I think my being right makes pretty big difference.

I'm sure there's some good product in every category, but the utter mass of crap under the same banner makes many people rightly distrust it. Calling attention to more software that hasn't earned a good rep won't help the problem. Besides that, many people prefer products that somebody really takes responsibility for and properly supports to one whose entire Help section on its Web site reads "Page TracGuide not found."

There is a signal to noise ratio problem as you are saying, but I still think there are a fair amount of mature titles that go unnoticed too, Virtualbox being an example. There are also a ton of useful tools that work well that somebody has decided to write an OS X GUI for, such as ffmpeg/ffmpegX/Handbrake. Sometimes these GUIs are lagging behind the command line tool they are trying to control.

besson3c · Nov 5, 2007, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by MacosNerd

Fair enough you are correct in the generalization that I made, however in virtualbox's case there is a lack of a track record, and the product is still in beta. And as I mentioned the support issue. I think average users and people who cannot afford to have problems look towards a commercial product like fusion..

While you noted a number of open source success stories there are others that have failed. Being open sourced is not a guarantee of success and with two well establish vendors (parallels & fusion) virtual box will have its handful trying to persuade users to use their product.

As I noted for me, I need peace of mind, that the virtualization product that I use will work. I’ve tried both parallels and fusion and for my needs I’ve found fusion to be the best product.

I understand what you are saying here, and agree to some extent, although while Virtualbox is a beta on the Mac, it is pretty mature under Linux, and its backend QEMU is even more mature.

However, like I said, I do understand people wanting something that seems a little more polished, which is what I meant by mindshare, to some extent. However, I also think there must be a whole category of users who are not running mission critical apps that run under different OSes and are just using Windows to test pages in IE, perhaps use a particular site, or doing something else where the presence of Windows is that of convenience or entertainment, not necessity. It is within this category of users where I think a product like Virtualbox (or Q) on the Mac can still do well.

darkscout · Nov 5, 2007, 10:29 PM

VirtualBox VM quit unexpectedly.

Repead ad infinitum....

That's why. (just tried tonight, never heard of it before)

besson3c · Nov 5, 2007, 11:07 PM

Odd... Haven't had a crash with it yet, literally. Corrupt image?