A short word on VM's and VMWare

Blog posting by George Ou of ZDNet
Saw this article and thought 'how timely'. While my job has me doing more development work these days I began to look at VMWare, which I haven't touched since college.

While I agree with some of Mr. Ou's points, I don't necessarily think it's a MS Killer. If nothing else it compliments the OS fairly well and could provide yet another valuable tool for IT administrators looking to create thin-like client PCs. On this level I concur with Ou.

My own usage of VMWare is geared towards prototype testing. Installing multiple copies of Windows 2003 Server and examining impacts of things like Service Packs, security hotfixes, configuration changes. The system isn't meant for "production" so performance is less a concern.

For the average desktop user being able to clone on the fly and then jump into that clone would be a great idea. Though I am skeptical that the average user would really know when/how/why to do so.

If you're an up and coming system admin, or perhaps a programmer, I'd give a serious look at both VMWare and Microsoft's Virtual PC. The benefits of having flexible testing environments shouldn't be overlooked.