Virtual machines for free

Virtual machines created with Parallels, VMware, or Microsoft’s Virtual PC, are pretty much standard equipment for most programmers and web developers so that code can be tested on another operating system or browser.

Having a Mac with OS X I can’t run windows software without either having a separate windows machine, or installing a guest OS using Parallels.

But I’ve had some problems with Parallels recently, the new version won’t accept my old license code so I have to downgrade again, or upgrade my license.

Since I’m only using it to play a few old Windows games and test designs in IE, I thought I’d look around for an alternative. I hate dual booting, my reason for buying a Mac was to avoid viruses and dual booting into Windows just gives me nightmares.

Luckily Sun Microsystems have been working on a free virtual machine called <a href=”http://www.virtualbox.org/”>VirtualBox</a>, which looks almost exactly like Parallels or VMware, seems to work just as well as them, and best of all it’s FREE!

At that kind of price I can afford to test it and then not feel bad if I only use it once in a while, whereas the paid versions really need to be used often to recoup the cost in having them.