Desktop Hypervisors - ROUNDUP

I haven't tried every one of these products, but I have at least read up on them. Here is my breakdown, my preference, and my reasoning.

VMware Player - Free!
All of the Virtual Appliances on VMWare's website are all fine and dandy, but there are a few downsides to them. For one, the VMware Player install is a whopping 178MB (!). Second, the Player doesn't have the capability to edit the VM in any way, other than your basic mounting of ISO images and the like, so you're stuck downloading a preconfigured Virtual Appliance (which means no proprietary OSes are available, like Windows) or forced into some hackery to make your disk images and customizing a config file by hand. The steps involved aren't too advanced, but the point is kinda lame nonetheless. Vista isn't supported, but I've seen it working quite well.

VMware Server - Free (but you have to register for a serial #)
Like VMWare Player, this is a rather large install at about 150MB. All of the downsides of the VMWare player are negated by the fact that it includes a UI to create your own VMs. The install and creation of VMs is easy enough, though the UI is somewhat complicated once you're not using the wizards. I think this has to do more with there are just a bunch of options than it actually being complicated though. It could be a little daunting for a newb. Like the player, Vista isn't supported, but I've seen it working quite well. Also, the server versions lag behind the Player version (which is on par with the VMware Workstation version), so images created for the Player currently won't work on the Server.

VMware Workstation - $190
Works just like VMWare Server only supports more features and you have more control over your VMs. For example, you can create more virtual switches, snapshots, cloning, and templates. Basically it's the "lower end" version of VMware ESX. It supports a lot of the same functionality with a lot of the features that a "power user" might want. The big plusses are it has experimental 3D support (not enabled by default), which means it's on VMware's todo list. This can only be a good thing. Also, it has drag-and-drop support for copying files back and forth from the host OS to the guest OS. I found this to be handy once or twice. Lastly, USB support seems pretty stable too. My webcam worked without a hitch, as did my portable hard drive. VirtualBox, upon installing the USB driver, blue-screened my guest OS and subsequesntly FUBAR'ed it. It also blue-screened my host OS, but that recovered fine (so far). Oh, and it has a remote-display functionality for running on a "headless" server, but I haven't played around with it too much.

Downsides are it is absolutely not portable, with no portability in sight. It even required a reboot after installation. Also, the price tag is a bit high. I'm cheap as it is, so I don't know if I would pay the $200 for it. It's worth $100 though. $150 if it were around bonus week

This brings up point about VMware that's effin' annoying though. They have eleventy versions of their product and they all overlap! How about being a little less confused about your own damn products?

VirtualBox - Free!
I should start off by saying that this is my current favorite, so lest it sound like I'm praising only the virtues I'll start off with the bad stuff. After a while of running, the screen updates tend to slow down some. I assume this has to do with my Host OS (XP) swapping out the memory used in my guest OS (currently XP as well), but since the slowdown is only temporary (usually) and the other times it's snappy as hell, it's excusable. Also, I don't think it supports SMP for the dual core folks out there. I haven't seen the option anyway. Lastly, and this is both good and bad, IMO, the UI has just the essential options for mountind CDROMS and power management, etc. HOWEVER, VirtualBox includes a commandline utility that lets you do anything you want, and more, than other products.

A few of the good things are: Supports buggy USB passthru (VMware does too), snappy responsive VMs, lets me set the memory for the video card as seen by the guest OS, supports as many networking configurations as VMWare WS/server, but only has one virtual switch like VMware Server does. Also, it has a pretty neat "VRDP" feature for installing VirtualBox on a headless workstation and accessing the VM using any RDP client WITHOUT installing an RDP server on your guest OS. Neat idea. However, when I tried it the screen just froze and I couldn't do anything. Not sure about that one. Also, when I tried watching a movie on it (MPG, not DVD), the movie was pretty choppy. I had to use my host OS's video player to watch it. That's not so good.

Another neat feature that VirtualBox has (and VMware doesn't) is built in support for sharing files between your Guest OS and your Host OS. This is a requirement, IMO, since I *mostly* use on my work laptop, but I want to store all my personal documents on my portable hard drive and back up my VM's to it as well. This requires both the VM and the Host OS to access the same drive, which this sharing functionality makes a breeze.

Also, VirtualBox (with wrapper) is PORTABLE! Meaning, I can dump the entire sha-bang on my portable hard drive and away I go, usurping and assimilating any PC I can find!

All in all, VirtualBox has lots of promise. It has a little while before it's "there" though. I'm sure it being open source will help speed it up.

Mojopac - Free/$50
Mojopac's idea is a little different than the other ones in this list in that it's NOT a virtual machine. I include it here though because it provides a solution to my problem - computing environment independance. Mojopac is simply a program that you run that makes it LOOK like you're running a virtual machine, but really it is just hiding your Windows' Desktop with it's own UI. This has obvious benefits and detriments. One of the major benefits is that you can run 3D/DirectX games at full speed since there is no emulation happening. However, the downside, for me, is that it only runs on Windows and only works for a Windows "guest OS". That means no DOS VM to compile my pongclock for JoyMonkey, and no Linux VM to develop proggies local on my computer. That's kind of the clincher for me, since I don't play many games (though a few of my ex gf's might scoff at that statement)...

For a lot of people, Mojopac is a great solution. Just not for me.

moka5 LivePC - Free (but registration is required)
To be honest I didn't give this one a go at all. I read reviews and specifications and based on what I read I decided it wasn't for me. They seem to not really know who their target audience is since LivePC is a mix between an end user piece of software and something an small enterprise might use. Jack of all trades, master of none... and all that. It has a decent-sized collection of ready to run "Live PCs" though, like the VMware Virtual Appliance library.

QEMU - Free!
This is the DOS equivelent of the XP VirtualBox. 100% commandline and the VMs are rather slow. Out of all the products in the list, this is the only one that doesn't require local administrator access though.

MS Virtual PC - Free!
This is another one I didn't try because after reading the specifications and features I decided it wasn't for me. It looks rather similar to everything else out there, but namely, it doesn't support USB passthru OR do officially support Linux VMs (). However, out of all the hypervisors, this is the only one that officially supports Vista.