New Virtual Machine (version) available.

[JCitron]

For those interested in trying a new VM, take a look at Oracle's Virtual Box 4.0.

The performance is outstanding, We use this internally for various pplications (Oracle/Sun wrote it and I work for Oracle!). Even graphics run well as I found out with VB runing Ubuntu on my Windows 7 machine at home.

Check out.
www.virtualbox.org

This is quite cross-platform with versions available for Solaris, Linux and OSx as well as for Windows. I use the Windows version to run XP on a Windows 7 machine because Windows 7 isn't supported yet in the office.

John

 

[RRSignal]

Yeah good stuff, thanks. There's still some malware that is VM-aware but doesn't seem to pick up VirtualBox yet. This fact is probably of little relevance to most people but definitely a feather in VB's cap!

 

[tomurban]

For those interested in trying a new VM, take a look at Oracle's Virtual Box 4.0.

The performance is outstanding, We use this internally for various pplications (Oracle/Sun wrote it and I work for Oracle!). Even graphics run well as I found out with VB runing Ubuntu on my Windows 7 machine at home.

Check out.
www.virtualbox.org

This is quite cross-platform with versions available for Solaris, Linux and OSx as well as for Windows. I use the Windows version to run XP on a Windows 7 machine because Windows 7 isn't supported yet in the office.

John

What is the advantage if any, for running TRAINZ on XP or WIN7.

tomurban

 

[JCitron]

What is the advantage if any, for running TRAINZ on XP or WIN7.

tomurban

None on a Windows PC, but if you're using a MAC or a 'nix box, you can now run Windows on a fairly decent VM. The speed is really speedy on the Virtual Box. The really slow Microsoft Virtual PC won't handle graphics at all. Only Parallels comes in better, but that's not free, and is now just being offered in a 64-bit version.

John

 

[robd]

@JCitron

Thanks for the 'heads up' on VirtualBox.

When I migrated to Win7 x64 from XP Home I found that some of my older x32 software would not install, since installing VirtualBox, plus the guest additions, I can now happily run a XP Home sp3 virtual machine and my legacy software.

I tried the Microsoft Virtual PC and found it to be extremely flaky and prone to crashing, no such problems with VirtualBox though, a brilliant piece of software!

Rob.

 

[JCitron]

@JCitron

Thanks for the 'heads up' on VirtualBox.

When I migrated to Win7 x64 from XP Home I found that some of my older x32 software would not install, since installing VirtualBox, plus the guest additions, I can now happily run a XP Home sp3 virtual machine and my legacy software.

I tried the Microsoft Virtual PC and found it to be extremely flaky and prone to crashing, no such problems with VirtualBox though, a brilliant piece of software!

Rob.

Rob,

That's also the reason why I use the Oracle VM at home. The Microsoft Virtual PC crashes and is way too slow! You'd think that the people who wrote the Windows code would make their VM perform better on Windows!

I also have an old copy of Paralells, but that only runs on 32-bit. It's can be upgraded for $49.99, and the performance is excellent. Eventually I may update that because I stil have some VMs in Parallel format, which can't be transferred to anything else.

John

 

[robd]

John,

I notice that an update to VirtualBox is available, I recently installed v4.0.2 and the update is v4.0.4, will this update install over v4.0.2 or will I have to re-install from scratch?

As you say, VB runs a lot quicker than MS Virtual PC, so much so that when the VM is scaled up to full screen resolution you forget that it's a virtual machine. I'm not sure if it's fast enough for games though but that's not what I run it for.

Very impressed so far.

Rob.

 

[JCitron]

John,

I notice that an update to VirtualBox is available, I recently installed v4.0.2 and the update is v4.0.4, will this update install over v4.0.2 or will I have to re-install from scratch?

As you say, VB runs a lot quicker than MS Virtual PC, so much so that when the VM is scaled up to full screen resolution you forget that it's a virtual machine. I'm not sure if it's fast enough for games though but that's not what I run it for.

Very impressed so far.

Rob.

I think it overwrites the same directory. I can't remember because I had to do a fresh install of everything on my PC recently! If anything, it'll still open up any saved VMs you have. That's the good thing about virtual machines.

I noticed that too with the perfornance. It's a great way to run older stuff, and to test new stuff. With the MS VM, it ran so slow it was difficult to test anything because the performance isn't there.

The graphics I think are only 16-bit, which won't look good. I'll have to check that out. Even still older programs will still run fine in 16-bit graphics.

John

 

[robd]

John

I can confirm that it does overwrite the existing installation, VB 4.0.2 now updated to 4.0.4

I am writing this post to the Trainz forum in a virtual machine with Ubuntu 10.2 as the operating system, VirtualBox running in Win7 x64! - How cool is that ?

Thanks John

Rob