On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Ben-Nes Michael wrote:
> I thought about VMware but its expensive for such small task ( im going to
> check new sites ones a week ) so I thought that maybe there are other
> competitors out there for VMware.
>
> Because im not going to use it frequently I don't really need great
> performance.
>
> Any ideas / recommendation ?
Will you be able to make money from the aforementioned task?
If yes, then VMware should be cost effective.
A license costs $299. Let's say you are a miser and can charge only $30
per hour of your time, then the cost of VMware is equivalent to 10 hours.
No matter which solution (VMware, Bochs or flex86) you choose, you'll need
to spend few hours learning and installing it. Let's say you need 5
hours to read the documentation, install the tool and install your
OS+browsers. Then you already spent the equivalent of $150. (I believe
10 hours are a more realistic number.)
Then, say you need to check 4 Web sites once a week. If you need 5
minutes to check a single site in a fast virtual machine (with VMware) but
10 minutes in a slower virtual machine, then by using VMware you save 20
minutes each week. After 30 weeks (7.5 months) you recoup the extra
investment you made in VMware.
Other considrations which are supported by VMware but I don't know about
the other solutions:
1. Ability to suspend and resume virtual machines, so you don't need to
waste time waiting for the virtual machine to reboot, is important.
2. Ease of cloning a virtual machine. So you need to install MS-Windows
only once, and then in each clone, you need only to install its own
browser.
3. Support of networking, which is good enough to allow your virtual
machines to be connected to the Internet.
--- Omer
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