> There's also VirtualBox - http://www.virtualbox.org/

 

Yes, indeed.  I use Parallels, Virtualbox, and VMWare Workstation in various
places.  Here's what I would say about virtualbox - 

 

It's awesome, as long as you don't use it all day, or every day, or
professionally, or if your expectations are set sufficiently lower than
VMWare or Parallels.  And what I mean by that is - 

 

Virtualbox is buggy by comparison to either VMWare or Parallels, and also
feature lacking by comparison, but well within the realm of "usable."  It's
awesome for what you get for free, but if you use a VM regularly and/or
professionally then spend the $80 or $150 for a professional grade product.


 

Some specific issues I've faced with virtualbox are:

.         I tried to upgrade virtualbox 2 to 3, and something went horribly
wrong with the upgrade process.  My network drivers became hosed, and I
couldn't recover my network adapters no matter what I did.  I had to restore
from system image.

.         While the VM is running, you cannot switch your network adapter
from shared to bridged or whatever.  It simply can't be changed on the fly.

.         In ubuntu, when I put virtualbox into full screen mode in one of
the "spaces," or "expose" as ubuntu calls it, whenever I switch to/from
virtualbox, the screen gets all jittery and glitchy for a while.

.         There's some sort of video glitch, when I'm in the preferences
panel, there's tab #1 and tab #2, and when I switch from one tab to the
other, I still see the controls of the first tab, etc, until I get out and
come back in there.

.         There probably is some sort of converter to allow you to switch
from parallels (or whatever) to virtualbox, but it didn't make itself
readily obvious.  I didn't look for anything, so maybe it's infinitesimally
near to obvious, but not obvious.

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