Vista - "ideal" desktop to be Virtual PC host

I've been given the go-ahead to buy a new desktop system to run Virtual
PC (or another virtual machine solution). I make rather heavy use of
Virtual PC, running a variety of guest OSes (rarely more than two at a
time) for testing, ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Server 2008.

What processor, what (generically) kind of system, what operating system
should I specify?

Bob

On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:12:56 -0400, bobfnospam@xxxxxx wrote:
x64 OS, 8GB of RAM,Intel dual or quad CPU with hardware virtualization
(fastest speed you can afford) multiple disks, one for host OS,
separate disk or raid system for VMs.

For VPC specifically, a faster dual-core system will give you better
performance with VMs than a quad-core system, since all VMs in VPC run
on the same core. A 3.3GHz dual-core will outperform a 2.4GHz quad
with respect to running multiple VMs.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/

<bobfnospam@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23O$1DNLgJHA.3728@xxxxxx
Often you'll hear computer professionals say that "throwing hardware at it"
isn't the solution. However, with virtualisation, it almost always is!

As Steve said, get the fastest dual-core processor which supports hardware
virtualisation, and at least 8GB RAM
Obviously a 64-bit one so that you can use all that extra RAM. I'd recommend
Vista Business Edition, since mainstream support for XP Pro is going to
expire in April...
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecyc...ilter=FilterNO


--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

"Steve Jain [MVP]" <noreply.-@-.essjae.com> wrote in message
news:qpnun4d5fu3ddjrrfcersvvfhkc36bcncc@xxxxxxWith multiple cores now the norm instead of rare, let's hope that this
changes in a future release!