VMWare Player rocks

I know, I know, it's like sacrilege to recommend a proprietary product when there is a good open source player in the field (VirtualBox), but wow, the new VMWare player is solid.

I've installed it on Ubuntu x64 and Windows 7 x64. Each did so with no complaint. Then I created an x64 guest on each with the other as the OS. So I have Ubuntu 9.10 x64 as host with Windows 7 x64 as guest and vice versa. Everything everywhere runs as it should!

It's so good that I prefer doing this to rebooting into the desired OS. I just run one, and if I need the other it boot it with VMplayer. All for free. The best thing for me, in addition to simply working, is that it recognizes USB without issue. This makes using USB drives possible. Something that has always been flaky on VirtualBox and ultimately has prevented me from using Virtual Technology seriously.

But now it all works. I should say it does not support 3D acceleration in most setups, so VirtualBox has it beat there. However, if you just want to try an OS, or have one around for that specific app at work. This will work. I've never used a more stable virtual environment and that is saying a lot. I can remember the SoftWindows for Mac back in the day. Yeah ... I'm that old :)