VMware Vs VirtualBox Vs Virtual PC 2007 - Part 1

While anti-malware and firewall will help secure the system, browsing using a sandbox or virtual environment has become one of the methods to prevent infection and damage on the main system (host system). There are numbers of virtual software to enjoy and this article will discuss the three popular virtual machine applications: Virtual PC 2007, VirtualBox and VMware Workstation.

VMware, Virtual PC and VirtualBox do require modern hardware but it is recommended to use high-end and modern CPUs (1 GHz or higher is recommended) so you won’t see much of slow performance when running a guest system. More RAM is also recommended especially if you will run multiple guest operating systems. All of these programs can be installed on 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Windows and you can also install it on many distros of Linux.

The installer of VMware is 507MB which larger than VirtualBox (67.8MB) and Virtual PC (30.4MB). The required installation size for Virtual PC (36MB) is smaller than what VirtualBox (79MB) and VMware (150MB) will use.

All of the 3 programs will automatically install the network adapters. VirtualBox and VMware’s installation process is quick and straightforward like Virtual PC. However, there is more customization option during installation with VB and VM. If you are advanced user, you will be enjoying VirtualBox and VMware.

The performance of VMware, Virtual PC and VirtualBox relies with the available RAM and configurations of the program but on my test desktop that have 3GB of RAM, VMware outperforms VirtualBox and Virtual PC.

VirtualBox hangs or freeze when creating new virtual disk and the system crawls while it is busy creating the new virtual disk. The system’s performance is back to normal as soon as this activity is done. This incident does not occur with Virtual PC and VMware.

VMware will use more virtual memory size that VirtualBox and Virtual PC because VMware software is installed as a service (SaaS).