Someone PM'd me recently asking if it was worth the hassle to set up a Win32 and Win64 dual boot system.

My answer was virtualization. What do you guys think? Here's what I said to him:


Q:

I don't want to know how to do it – merely if you think it is a way I could reasonably go...

Sounds like fun to me. Go for it. I have Ubuntu 64-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, and Mac OS X 10.5.5 all installed on one machine. Though on the Mac they all run at the same time so I can copy and past my clipboard between the apps and OS's. In the case of 32-bit windows along side 64-bit windows I'm not sure there would be much advantage but I bet it's fun as heck.

Here's an additional idea! Find an app that does virtualization on Windows like Fusion for the Mac or Parallels for the Mac and run Vista64 virtualized inside XP32 and also XP32 virtualized inside inside Vista64. That way no matter which OS you boot up in the other one is there ready and waiting for cut & pastes, application sharing, and etc. I think there are such apps for windows so you might wanna look into it. Dual boot is fine and all but shutting down and starting up all the time to get back and forth is going to get pretty old pretty fast - at least it would for me!

I run all three simultaneously with dual monitors in 4gigs with a slower video card than yours with half the video ram. No problems so far... it's all pretty smooth! It sure bogs down when I have Quake 4 running on one system and Unreal Tournament running at the same time on another tho... Actually kinda surprising it runs at all but I get 20 to 50 fps out of both running in full screen. And... the most important bit... it's great fun having 3 OS's running at once!

I think other opinions are just as valid and the more the better when discussing this kinda thing. Let's take it public...

I recently switched to Vista64, although I kept XP in a dual-boot configuration. Since Vista64 is so fast and stable and can utilize all of my 8GB of RAM, it has become my primary OS. However, I have several Kodak dyesub printers (I was an engineer in Kodak's thermal printer group prior to retiring), and they only have 32-bit drivers. While I could boot back into XP every time I want to print, it's a nuisance. I installed Virtual PC and installed WinXP as a client (along with the Kodak drivers). Now, all I have to do is to launch Virtual PC and I can print my images without every having to leave Vista64. Having 8GB of RAM means that I can allocate plenty of RAM to Virtual PC so it runs pretty quickly.

Yeah, VPC, that's been around long enough to be pretty good by now. Is it still free or did it become a commercial ($) app after MS bought it from Connectix?

When I switched from Windows to Mac I considered virtualisation of Windows either using bootcamp or vmware fusion, then decided that since I could convert all my software licenses to OS X ones it was easier to just fully switch. Saying that, vmfusion does look pretty cool.

I'm using Parallels because it's supposed to be faster OpenGL. I've used WINE on Linux in the past quite allot with heavy 3D apps. WINE is pretty great! On the Mac I wanted Digital Fusion which I absolutely love and Houdini which I absolutely needed. Houdini just went Mac native so that's taken care of but now I'm finding VM's in general just a whole bunch of fun with buttloads of little conveniences and large gap fills!

Wow, you really know you're a geek when when you're hooked on "virtual machines".

VPC is still a freebie, that's why I'm using it.

Parallels is awful compared to VMWare Fusion in stablilty, compatibility, support, and (most importantly) speed. Once the second release of Fusion hit the streets, it was pretty much curtain call for Parallels.

If you hate someone, recommend Paralllels. If you actually like them, VMWare.

VirtualPC's now free for Windows (Microsoft wants to get everyone hooked on virtualization for business) while the PowerPC Mac version has ridden off into the sunset.

Really? So bad for Parallels? I'm using it. It's as fast as my CPUs are. I get 99.99% scaling and I haven't seen a compatibility issue yet. You're not talking about Parallels v3.x are you? Parallels 4 was released this month. I haven't tried VMWare yet but I'm told the OpenGL support is all but totally missing.