Paul wrote:

Yes wrote:


Thanks. A virtual pc has started piqueing my interest but never had
seen any user feedback about how much RAM or how many HDs were
useful for it. It looks like I might only need to up my RAM in
order to have at least the basics for a virtual machine. Still not
sure I'll do that because of how I'd want to configure the s/w
side, but that's a different issue :-)

I have a machine with 4GB of RAM installed.

Linux virtual machines get 1GB.
Windows machines get 512MB or 256MB. But that
can be adjusted before starting a guest OS, so it's
adjustable.

I run either two or three virtual machines on my 4GB
computer. Two large ones and a small one is about
all that fits. The small one functions as a bridge
between VM addons being available in one environment, and
not another.

VMs are limited in terms of their connectivity. So
somethings it hard to get things "in" and "out" of
the VM.

VMs allow evaluating operating systems, without
shutting down and rebooting. If I'm worried something
will infect the host OS, I can switch to a VM and
test it there.

The number of hard drives, might be a reflection
of the amount of sustained I/O to be expected.
Say one VM is writing 100GB of data, while I'm trying
to read USENET in Thunderbird on my host OS. If all the
I/O of the VM, was supported by my second hard drive,
there would be fewer hesitations while I'm reading
USENET articles on the host (using the first disk).
So rather than it being a "storage space issue",
sometimes it just the amount of hard drive activity,
and spreading it out so there is less head movement
on the hard drive.

Paul

I've thought about a virtual pc for the reasons you cite - O/S and
malware. The questions I saw for me a
1. to what extent would I need to change my hardware
2. what s/w would I need in order to switch
3. cost to do so

As far as the hardware goes, Brian Cryer's response and yours (thank
you both) suggest that my existing build could handle a vm with little
to no additional h/w, though maybe adding more RAM may make sense for
me. My pc has 4Gb RAM at present - that's OK for my existing O/S (Win
XP Pro, SP3), but eventually I would like to go to a 64 bit O/S.

With regard to the s/w, that's beyond the usual focus of
alt.comp.hardware, though I'd be happy to hear comments. My pocketbook
is the biggest constraint :-)

Ideally, I'd like to move to a 64-bit O/S and run everything in a VM
environment I want to keep the commercial software I have. The
programs were developed to work in Windows XP (and earlier). They
satisfy my needs and replacing them is too costly. So, I'm thinking at
least one VM centered around WinXP. From there, there are other O/S's
I've thought about playing around with, which is why VM is so appealing.

John