Flexbeta has got a review of VMWare Workstation 5.0. This new beta includes many nice features such as the ability to capture movies, and support for 64Bit hardware.
VMWare Workstation 5.0 Beta Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Doesn;t really seem to be breaking news to me, I installed VmWare Workstation beta 5 months ago.
I’m glad the reviewer was honest about how SLOW beta 5 is. Debugging is on by default and running Vmware with this enabled, well good luck ever doing anything in VM. Even if you turn off debugging it still takes forever and a day just to boot an OS in the VM, let alone use any application for that OS productively. Beta 5 is also a resource hog, but that’s to be expected in the beta stage I guess.
my advice is to stick with Vmware 4.5, or else find suitable replacement apps in your native OS. Beta 5 is too slow to be useable
I won’t be upgrading.
Unless they make it same speed or faster and the USB webcam works too.
They could program a drag and drop between gues and host.
Can’t be that difficult.
But if that will make it even a tad slower – I rather not have that.
Hi,
I’m fairly sure that VMWare 4.5 already has this feature, if you install the VMWare Tools.
Reading the review, I’d have to say it’s well written and very honest, something which can’t be said for some of the other ‘content’ which turns up on osnews/slashdot these days…
Hopefully they’ll increase the performance over 4.5 in the final 5.0 release. (Anybody in the know: How does Solaris Zones/Project-Kevlar compares to this?)
Bye,
Victor
Workstation beta builds have all kinds of extra debugging options turned on, including asserts. The release version will be dramatically faster than the beta, and noticeably faster than WS 4.5.2.
I’d like to see VMware Tools and support for OpenBSD. Other than hhat, VMware is a very nice app (which is more than I can say about VirtualPC).
Have they gone to GTK2 yet on the Linux version? It’d sure be nice for it to blend in and get antialiasing.
They use WXWidgets and so it should blend in. Have you even tried it?
I run VMware 4.5.2.
jay@mythtv:~$ ldd /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware
…
libgtk-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0 (0xb7d1b000)
…
It’s obviously using GTK 1.x like I said.
i think he meant tried 5.0
i really cant wait to make some html tutorials with this.. much much much better then flash ones for $9.99 a pop.. now i can make my own.. ooops, there went another internet market.. hehe
Alex said, “Have you even tried it?”
He has to be referring to 4.5.2 because I don’t see 5.0 available for public download.
If I’m wrong, correct me with a link and I will be happy to try it out.
Maybe not officially, but VMware workstation does run OpenBSD quite well. Also all slowness comments aren’t really valid in a beta because of the debugging.
Not if your host is Linux and Vmware is running Windows.
USB webcam doesn’t work.
DirectX games and mouse feels very weird.
So yeah hope they fix it.
I’ve been able to use my USB camera without any problems with older and the current versions of VMware. (Host: GNU/Linux Guest: MS Windows)
I used it with Windows Media Server stuff so other people could stream it. (I know WM sucks, but it was the only thing my ISP supported.)
The beta probably supports more advanced cameras too now (because mine very very cheap).
Also many DirectX games work great in VMware. You must make sure you use fullscreen mode though, because games such as Cossacks otherwise have problems and because everything runs a lot faster in fullscreen mode.
I could never make either work.
Unreal would render – but my usb mouse would be unresponsive.
Logitech Webcam I tried making it work with MSN Messenger.
Never had any luck.
my vmware build is 4.5.2
Mind you last time I had those bugs my host was Linux Mandrake.
I’ve changed distros – if its a host related bug – I could try again to see if it works now.
Webcam I can receive – but never send.
I’m amazed that Flexbeta was able to actually fit a review among all of that advertising, and it was all so unobtrusive aswell.. Some webmasters don’t have a clue.
VMware is one of the coolest apps out there. I have a AMD-XP 2500+ 512MB running on Linux with LVM2 for my Fileserver while running Win2k under VMware to server some Windows apps which I can’t find for linux. This way I only have one server running 24/7 and costs less then running the two of them independintly. Plus when I upgrade this server I can just copy the Windows Virual partition files across to the new PC and be up and running in minutes with more power. It’s also fairly stable, 39 days uptime for both Linux and VMware with Win2k isn’t bad… but the box did crash!
Don’t know what to blame.
I run Windows XP Pro on it.
And it feels pretty stable and virus-free
despite me not having an AV solution
and rarely updating.
Compare that with me installing Windows XP
on my laptop the other day.
In under 2 hours I got a virus
(despite closing a lot of services and having the internet firewall on)
Of course you have to be very carefull with activation. Each time you reinstall Windows XP – it counts +1. When you hit 7 – you can’t reactivate any more.
I cannot reactivate my LEGAL copy of Windows XP any longer.
(in fact had 2 legal copies).
But luckily Vmware froze a working activated copy – which if reinstalled with the same settings as before (specially RAM) – all works fine without the need for reactivation.
Microsoft sucks bad bad bad.
But sadly need Windows XP to open and work on client projects: .NET, MS SQL, Corel Draw, MS Office VBA, etc