General

I've seen a couple threads on the MediaMonkey Forums looking for help on supporting multiple databases, and it just so happens that I needed something that would let me switch databases easily while I test my Play Server application.

Being new to MediaMonkey, and not immediately seeing a solution to my problem, I went ahead and made my own!

Basically you use this program to switch the database and launch MediaMonkey. You can replace the MediaMonkey shortcut with a shortcut to this program, even.

I just discovered Dave's Quick Search Deskbar and man, this thing is cool! It gives you easy access to a ton of different functions like calculator, calendar, clock, currency converter, and stock quotes. Not only that, but any kind of internet search you can dream up like acronym finder, dictionary, translations - anything!

Not only is it so versatile right out of the box, but it's so easy to modify! The one thing I could find though was renewing my IP address though the tool. So I wrote it :)

Check out my "iptools" attachment. Just unzip it into your addons folder and refresh the Deskbar. Then you will have a couple commands at your disposal:

• "renewip": Renews your IP address.
• "showip": Shows your local IP addresses
• "showip /ext": Shows your external IP address

I've been completely facinated lately with that old Busweiser commercial after seeing it again recently. Also recently, I've been getting back into C# trying to help out a friend of mine. Put the two together and what do you get?

True, True (*-style)!

Enjoy!

Update: Since writing this post I have since gained more experience both with VirtualBox 1.5.2 and VMware Workstation 6 (both current as of 10/07). I updated my reviews to reflect this. Also, after re-reading it the first time, I thought it would be valuable to list what I'm looking for in a hosted (i.e. desktop, or non-bare-metal/native) hypervisor. I suspect that relative to most I am a power user, with power user wants/needs. This might not be the same as what you're looking for though. As such, I tried to lay out the pros and cons in the most generic way possible.

Also, previous to this experience with researching a suitable desktop VM my primary experience has been with the server-grade version of VMware, VMware ESX 2/3. I tried to keep this as "non-technical" as I can, but if you want to know more feel free to ask.

Oh, and one more thing. Before you even THINK about trying out any of these, make sure you have at LEAST 1GB of RAM in your PC. Any less and you'll be spending your day waiting for the mouse to move while the VM's memory gets swapped out of the host OS's pagefile/swapspace. Ideally you don't want to oversubscribe your resources to your VMs at all, but it's bound to happen, and as long as you don't pass a certain threshold, you should be fine.

As you know, I am pretty big into the whole "Portable App" movement. I have my own launcher, made my own wrapper, and have customized a few applications that I have found handy to have around. But all in all, this has turned into a pain in the ass. When new versions of the products are released, I have to go through the same riggamaroll every damn time that involves a few hours of recoding and/or testing. Such a hassle.