SNIP Blog

Heard of Virtualisation, and VM Ware? There are two flavours, the free one and the paid for one. But there is a way to get the best of both.

The VM Player, is a free app that lets you run virtual machines on your desktop. You could run Windows 2000, virtually, on a Windows Vista PC for example. In order to do this, you need a Virtual Appliance for that OS you want to load.

There are loads of free ones, and they’re often Linux based systems that you can download, but things always get tricky when you delve into the Windows world. Also, the free VM Player does NOT let you create your own Virtiual Appliances.

This is where VM Ware comes in, as it lets you create your own Virtual Appliances and costs about 60 quid.

The cool think about the trial version, is that it is fully featured for 30 days, meaning you can now create your own Virtual Appliances for what ever OS you have access too. I have an Appliance created for an old version of Windows 2000. I could make one for Windows 98 too, and even make some appliances for some Linux distros, all using the free demo.

Once the demo runs out though, I can still run the appliances using the free VM Player

Cool, huh?

So grab yourself a trial version of VM Ware, then make as many virtual appliances as you can, before the demo ends, then switch to the free player to keep going.

It even seems to work cross OS, as I made a Windows 2000 appliance on my Mac then swapped it over to my PC, and it still works