Virtual Machines are awesome.

I've recently started using Virtual Box. It's a lot better than it used to be a few years ago when I last tried it. I can actually play games in a virtual box running Windows XP. It can be installed on all platforms, and has extensions for them all too. These extensions are important for interacting nicely with the host operating system. I've used it both for hosting XP, and for hosting Ubuntu Desktop 9.10. One minor issue I've had with this is that I have to run a command line tool in order to replicate a virtual disk. It's not just a drag and drop action, because there is a GUID attached to each virtual disk, and it needs to be different than all the others on the host machine.

I've played with VMWare too. Also very nice. I've only done Ubuntu 9.10 on it so far, but I like it. Very fast, but a bit odd to get going. I'm just no used to it. I'm happy enough with Virtual Box, that I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time on this. I also didn't like that the website wants me to log in every time I download it, even if the current version just told me to download an update.

Microsoft Virtual PC is good, but I've had a lot of problems with it recently. Slow response, and sound that breaks up from time to time are the major frustrations. I still use it regularly for some things like IE 6 testing for work, just because I've already had the machines built with Virtual PC. I do love that fact that I can just drag and drop the hard drive to a new folder to create a brand new virtual machine. Keep in mind, that if you're going to do this, and run more than one cloned OS at a time, you'll need to change each one's MAC address so that they appear as different machines on the network.

I've used Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 for a few years, and it's works well, but I don't like the virtual machine manager, based on IE and IIS. They need a real desktop tool. Other than that, it works well, and I'd even recommend it, but I haven't tried Hyper-V Server 2008 yet. My brother has used it and thinks it is the future. I have to find some time and the right hardware to play with it very soon, so I can give a proper opinion. So far, what I've read and heard has been very positive.