[Ham-Computers] RE: Virtual

[Hsu, Aaron (NBC Universal)]

John,

The specs are recommended guidelines, not actual requirements.  The actual amount of RAM and drive space you need are dependent on what OS you're running and what OS you want to virtualize.  For example, if I wanted to run WinXP in both at the *BARE* minimum, then I would need 256MB RAM and about 4GB of total drive space for the "HOST" computer.

  Host: 128MB RAM + 2GB drive space
  Virtual: 128MB RAM + 2GB drive Space

The RAM guideline is based on Microsoft's recommended amount to run XP and the drive space and is pretty close to what's required to install XP (this is inline with what's posted on the website).  However, Win98 doesn't *require* 64MB to run...it will install on a 32MB system (and I believe even as low as 16MB).  But the computing experience of Win98 with less than 64MB is horrid.  Combine that with the latency of vitualization and you have a truly useless VM session.

Basically, how ever much RAM you feel you need to run a VM session is how much free RAM you'll need to allocate to that session.  If you want "good" XP performance inside a VM, then you should allocate at least 512MB, perhaps even 1GB.  Not many people have that much RAM available, so you'll need to lower the VM RAM to accommodate.  One thing is sure...you can't allocate more RAM to the VM than you have "free" on your "HOST".  In other words, if your PC has 512MB total, but only 128MB "free" once you're at the desktop, you can't allocate more than 128MB to the VM - the VM session manager will balk and say you don't have enough free RAM.

73,

  - Aaron, NN6O


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 6:46 PM
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Virtual

Jeff posted some experiences with VMWARE player.

I hope that he and others will drop in and tell us what they are doing with things virtual, both using and not using the Windows platform.

For example, in mid-March Aaron offered this link:  http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc.  There and other places we can find minimum requirements, say, to run XP and 98SE (and other OS, too) from inside Vista.  I wonder if there are Microsoft numbers, and how accurate they may be.  Anyone know from personal experience?

John W0IKT