* Jc García <jyo.gar...@gmail.com> [150726 12:06]: > 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman <t...@bonedaddy.net>: > > > I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) > > > > But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other > > OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W > > support stuff runs in a VM. > > > The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to > use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g > modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no > problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a > VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb > printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also > didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine > for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, > using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't > dealt with DELL hardware.
It works OK sometimes with USB but I've had problems getting even USB disks to be seen by the VM and forget it when the USB devices change a lot dynamically. It doesn't work at all in an environment like that. And I use it with state of the art machines. Recent quad core i7 machines with plenty of memory and using processor virtualization features. Not just Dell machines. And on server machines we've had to move off VirtualBox due to performance issues. I'm not knocking VirtualBox. I love it and continue to use it whenever I can. But there are still cases where a native boot is needed for me. > > BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but > do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I > would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call > center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much > knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general > 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go > to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly > serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be > awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at > call centers). In the times I've had to deal with support it's usually about doing what they ask so they finally believe that it's a hardware problem and will generate the needed RMA # to get replacements. Sometimes that's running Dell Diagnostics and sometimes it's just running through something they know how to do in Windows so they're convinced.
