[PLUG] XP in VMware or VirtualBox etc.

[Joe Shisei Niski]

William A Morita wrote:
> Gang,
>
> Does anyone out there used XP in a Virtual setting regularly?
>
> I am planning on upgrading my primary computer (new HW) which currently runs
> XP to Linux with XP running in a virtual environment.
>
> What I want to know is what limitations there are, say with HW devices etc.
>
> - Bill 
i've been using 32-bit XP Pro under VirtualBox on 64-bit Ubuntu (Fiesty 
through Hardy) for a few reasons:

- TurboTax
- Quicken
- IE for the many sites that *still* break under Firefox (TicketBastard, 
er, TicketMaster, is one i use regularly, yet another reason to disklike 
Paule Allen, but i digress...)
- Running an ancient version of Symantec Act until i find or build a 
reasonable replacement contact manager (anyone have a script handy for 
converting CSV or tab-delimited files to Evolution .vcf's?)
- Synching the excellent SplashID to my ancient Handspring Visor until i 
can find a way to synch my KeePass data

My machine is a Core 2 Duo laptop w/4 GB RAM, with ReiserFS. i'm 
satisfied with XP in VirtualBox to the point of reformatting the 
partition with Vista Ultimate on it to get the space back (Vista 
Ultimate + Office 2007 Pro = >40 GB of disk suckage).

XP is very well-behaved in this environment, and performance is 
excellent. Quicken and TurboTax run better than they do on Vista, 
without a doubt. i find configuring VirtualBox much easier than VMWare, 
although the docs are a bit thin in places. Configuring USB devices is a 
bit tricky - especially my Visor, which is visible on the bus only when 
it's trying to synch. Networking is great (i configured it for bridge 
mode so i can use my home lan transparently), making my other partitions 
visible to the XP environment is a snap. Audio works fine, with the 
minor annoyance that VirtualBox hogs the audio - i can have have audio 
*either* from Windows or Ubuntu, but not both. Screen-resizing is great, 
and VirtualBox offers a "seamless" window mode in which the XP windows 
can coexist with the Linux apps (kinda like Parallels on the Mac), 
although XP taskbar positioning can make switching between XP and Linux 
apps less than seamless - but it sure looks cool (in a perverse sort of 
way) to see IE side-by-side with native Linux apps...

joe

________________________________________
Joe Shisei Niski
Portland, Oregon, USA