Looks like a likely solution to my Vista problems...
Does one create a virtual machine and then install the operating system onto that virtual machine? So I need to either go purchase XP to install on the virtual machine or use the Win2k that I already own.
How bad is the performance hit? Do you have to have drivers for the virtual machine OS that support the actual hardware or does it use the existing Vista drivers?
I'm excited. Perhaps I can continue to use some of my old engineering tools without rewriting them all.
Might be. I certainly won't install Vista or any other Windows, native on the hardware, ever again.
> Does one create a virtual machine and then install the operating system onto that virtual machine? So I need to either go purchase XP to install on the virtual machine or use the Win2k that I already own.
Correct. One creates a VM, using VMware's tools, and then boot that just like you'd boot a desktop with a blank hard drive. Insert your OS CD and install just like on a desktop.
>How bad is the performance hit?
Unnoticeable in general, because it's running in native x86 code. There may be a small hit for access to virtualized peripherals, but I haven't seen anything more than 5% or so even at the worst.
> Do you have to have drivers for the virtual machine OS that support the actual hardware or does it use the existing Vista drivers?
I don't know about Vista as a guest, haven't done that one yet. But in general, the hardware is virtualized by the host VMware software, so that the guest OS only sees what it is shown by VMware's layer.
There's a "VMware Tools" package that installs into the guest OS that takes care of a lot of handy things like dynamic resizing of the desktop space, etc.
> I'm excited. Perhaps I can continue to use some of my old engineering tools without rewriting them all.
That's a good thought. I'm a happy VMware customer, but as others have pointed out, there are competing products worth checking out too.