The Plunge

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Well, I took it. I bought VMWare Workstation 4.0 and a gig of RAM for my lab computer on Monday. I didn't really get a deal but did manage to shave $20.00 off the retail price. I had to do it sometime or other and the "missus" told me to wait until the new billing period on the ol' credit card (we just bought some art from Israel). Gee...I just hope she didn't forget that she gave me the "go ahead"...

I'm closer to creating that virtual lab, flexmeister.

 

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Ditto Trip. My 512MB of RAM came yesterday to make 768MB now. What a difference it makes when using VMware

 

I noticed RAM was cheap again just now - still, out of my league for the mo', Guys.

Have fun anyway

 

Well, it wasn't "cheap", but it was necessary.

 

An the wife agrees with that Trip?

 

Don't be daft, Si - he's a Guy - won't tell her till around August

 

Nah, she'll find out when the credit card bill comes in...or the package arrives in the mail, whichever is first. Then my @$$ will be new mown grass.

 

Yup, you're right, Trip - new mown grass right enough !!!

No justice when women+spending = the same as men+spending.

 

Just hope your missus doesn't see this. You're dead enough when Rosy gets around to it.

 

You guys are NOT meant to buy things as that means less credit card power for us ladies and then we have less retail therapy which leads to more agrovation for you guys than three months of PMT all stored up and aimed at you all at once!!!

 

That RAM arrived!!! Unfortunately, it arrived at work. I ordered it through one of our government vendors. I discovered by accident that he'll do personal orders for his really good customers. The person I've temporarily replaced put in an order for some RAM and although it was delivered to her house, I got the confirmation e-mail. I called the sales rep and he let me in on it. I thought about it and ordered through him.

He had no idea that I'd feel embarrassed at getting the RAM here..especially since I was away when it arrived and someone else opened it. I felt like someone would think I was stealing if I just put it in my bag and walked out of the building.

I talked to the rep and he told me he's really not supposed to fill personal orders. He does it as a courtesy but only shipped that one to the other gal's home because she was pregnant. The VMWare shipped today but he told me he'll give me the tracking number and, with that , I can contact the shipping co. and reroute it to my home address.

AND I'VE GOT A GIG OF RAM FOR MY LAB MACHINE!!!!!

 

Uh...make that 512 MB. In my excitement, I failed to really look at the packing slip. When I saw 512 MB, I thought it meant two sticks. Only one stick and was only charged that. Communications got fubared. I installed it anyway and with what was already onboard, it comes up to a beautiful 768 MB of RAM. Well...it's a start. The missus and the kids are due home in a bit so I got in installed without anyone around. I hope I can get that 2nd stick before the holidays hit.

 

Trip,

Hell has no fury like a woman’s scorn!!! IS your computer safe?

 

Oh my computers are safe. My wife wouldn't jeapordize the investment that's already put into them. The question is, am I safe. Actually, I'm exaggerating the situation a bit here. It is a bit difficult for her to understand the value in what I'm doing. She's even having trouble understanding how VMWare works, even tho I've been explaining it to her for months.

 

Glad to hear your computers are safe. Hope you will be ok....Mind your digits!!!

Can you spend a couple of minutes going through the VMWare stuff, wondering about going in that direction myself..

Many thanks.


Dave.

 

Well, first of all, here's the link to VMWare which should provide a lot of information about what it is and it's capacities. Also, down in the "Network" forum, you'll find a couple of threads on VMWare and Virtual Machines that explore the issue.

Basically, I have limited room for any sort of large home network. We have one basic family machine that provides our internet access, my lab machine, my wife's machine, and my laptop. My wife and the laptop connect to the rest of my little LAN via wireless connections. I have an access point plugged into my switch to hook everyone up. Of course, all these machines have a purpose and I can't just grab them all for my work. That's where my lab machine Abraham (all machines have to have a name, after all) comes in. It's a Dell Dimension 8300 Pentium 4 120 GB 100 ATA drive. It came with 256 MB RAM which I want to ramp up another Gig. I just confirmed the order for the 2nd stick of 512 MB RAM so I'll have it and VMWare in a few days.

VMWare creates virtual machines in one box. Their processes are pretty much isolated from each other and from the host OS so they act just like real machines. You can create a virtual network in a box. Each virtual machine can be independantly configured so that they act like a real network. Even the BIOS can be set individually.

The only limitation of the current version is that it only supports 1 GB of RAM for all the virtual machines. Adding more RAM won't equate to the ability to add more virtual machines. All of the virtual machines can be networked to an exterior (real) network and extended by that means as well.

There are enterprise versions of VMWare used for testing purposes and several virtual servers on one box will still act like several different actual servers.

Hope this is the info you were looking for.

 

Trip,

Thanks for the info, i will take a look.

Have you seen the Microsoft offering: Think its called virtual desktop...
Would that be the same type of thing?

 

I forgot to mention that I looked at both products and weighed the options very heavily. After all, Virtual PC is about $100 cheaper. In the end, the vast majority of people on three different technical forums literally spanning the globe recommended VMWare over VPC.

I'm also slightly paranoid of MS products. While VPC wasn't originally designed and implemented by MS, now that they own it, I was concerned about using the same OS disk to try and load multiple copies in VPC only to be told I had a license just for the one.

Also, feeling more paranoid, since I at some point want to play with a mixed MS/Linux network environment, despite what MS says, I'm not entirely convinced it would work and play well with a non-MS OS. Just my feelings on the matter.

 

Thanks Trip,

Food for thought..

I have a Dell 8200 with 256Ram so will need to buy some more...

How much did your ram cost?..seems quite expensive these days!!