Need to run something Windows on your Mac? Easy. There are four common ways of getting rid of the Windows itch—the full blown Boot Camp, which requires a reboot but offers full performance; the two virtualization apps, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion; and the Windows emulator, Crossover. All of these are solid ways of getting the job done. However, with the exception of Boot Camp, none of them are free.
If you look at the virtualisation field, Parallels and Fusion are the two big names on the Mac platform. But there is actually a third one which gets the job done as well—VirtualBox from Sun Microsystems. What’s more important is that this is an open source and free application. And with the recent 2.0 release, they have upped their game and taken some steady strides towards becoming a serious contender to the virtualization crown. The new release brings 64-bit support, better all round performance, and a new Leopardised interface for the Mac client.
(This screenshot, obtained from the VirtualBox website, is of an older beta release.)
VirtualBox provides almost all the features of Parallels and Fusion, including “seamless mode”, which lets Windows applications run side-by-side with Mac applications. There is also plenty of USB, networking, and SATA support to bridge your devices with the guest OS.
VirtualBox comes in two editions—one open source and the other closed. The closed source version comes with additional USB support, and SATA drivers. Both are free for personal use, but the latter comes at a price for enterprise users. VirtualBox is also available for Windows and Linux OSes and is a 36MB download for Intel Macs. I think it is worth a try.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
We cant add comments on the postings that are under links section..cant we..i think we should be able too..
about MS saying the ad is for sparking the conversation..
arent people and press already talking a lot and cursing MS for a premature OS like Vista..Why do they need more of that?
It’s a good idea to keep the Linked Lists comments free. The Linked Lists aren’t our contents and IMO, you should comment at the site which is linked.
Still if you guys want the Linked Lists comment enabled, we’ll think what we can do about it.
Its a really great app.. I’ve tried all three.. VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop and Virtualbox.. If you look at the price-performance factor, nothing, i mean nothing can beat this product.. another more important thing is that its completely Open Source.. thanx for the review..