It seems Microsoft believes virtualization is a technology for the datacenter, with client applications served by a combination of traditional deployment and streaming virtualized application images courtesy of its newly acquired SoftGrid technology.

So I had understandably low expectations when I installed Virtual PC 2007 onto my Dell XPS M1710 test bed. Lack of support for 64-bit guest OS — or any Unix/Linux derivatives, for that matter — narrowed my test parameters significantly, allowing me to focus on legacy Windows application support under Windows Vista. Virtual PC 2007 also proved to be a real slug in the performance department (see “Light makes right for VM performance”). Poor overall scores — even after multiple test runs — took the guesswork out of naming a VM performance leader: Virtual PC 2007 wasn’t even in the running.

Slow VMs aside, there were some bright spots during my evaluation. Networking, in particular, worked more consistently under Virtual PC 2007. My Intel 3945ABG wireless network card, long the bane of my Virtual PC 2004 (and Virtual Server) experiences, worked reliably under the new version. Previously, I had needed to construct an elaborate hack — one involving Internet Connection Sharing and the Microsoft Loopback adapter — just to get the VMs communicating. Now, it simply works.

Kudos to the developer who took the time to fix this and other nagging issues with Virtual PC 2007. Unfortunately, they forgot to address another biggie: lack of USB device integration. Nevertheless, the price is right.

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VMwareWorkstation 6.0 Beta 3

VMware Workstation has long been the standard bearer for desktop virtualization among hard-core users. A combination of robust virtual networking and unmatched OS support (19 flavors of Windows, 26 flavors of Unix/Linux) — plus a total lack of competition from Microsoft — has allowed VMware to effectively lock up the developer and technical support markets. Add to this the emergence of complementary technologies, such as VMware’s ACE, and it’s easy to see why VMware Workstation is viewed as the tool of choice for serious VM development.

To their credit, VMware’s product managers know where their bread is buttered. Version 6.0 of VMware Workstation is chock-full of developer-oriented features and functions. In addition to an ever-expanding OS roll call (Vista is now supported as both host and guest) and class-leading VM architecture (full 64-bit support with up to 10 virtual NICs and 8GB of RAM per VM), VMware Workstation now provides direct hooks into popular IDEs, such as Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse.

This last capability is a real time-saver for developers, since you can now design and test applications in one seamless step, using VMware to host the debugger within the desired target platform VM. It’s a nice complement to VMware’s existing stable of developer-centric features, such as unlimited per-VM snapshots. The snapshot feature — long one of the “must have” selling points of Workstation — has itself been overhauled. It now works like a true session recorder, allowing you to capture multiple VM states and play them back in sequence — a great help when debugging a multistage application process.