[vet-mm] Virtual machines using the free vmware player

[pmaxted at delasalle.melb.catholic.edu.au]

Hi All,

I have had great success running a virtual machine at near native speed on one of our new Acer PCs. I installed winxp pro, flash 8, photoshop cs2 into the virtual machine and all ran about the same speed as if they were on the actual host. The virtual hard disk was split into 2g segments so it would work with FAT32.

VMware have released a 'player' for free which will run these virtual machines. The big advantage is that you can set up an environment with all the software you need in the way you want it. By setting an admin password students can protect their machine from being used by other students. If it is deleted, simply copy the file again ... only takes a few minutes. No need to have separate partitions or reformat. You can even set up your own machine without having to purchase the VMware workstation software ... legally! You can copy and paste between the virtual machine and the host, and use shared folders.

I am thinking that it will have an application for my year 12 IT students next year. The more ram available on the host the closer the virtual machine runs at native speed.

Great for testing OS, trialled software etc.

FYI

Paul
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