Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 -vs- VMware Player

I use MS Virtual PC on a regular basis for testing software, demos, software development, and anything else I would want to do that could compromise the integrity of my computers. But recently I wanted to start doing some development against MS SharePoint 2007. The one thing I like most about the VMware player is that you can download pre-configured virtual appliances at http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/. The Virtual Machine is setup as follows.

• 1024 Megs of RAM.
• Windows 2003 Standard.
• SQL 2005 Standard.
• Sharepoint 2007.

The original setup was run with Virtual PC 2004 sp1. It would take about 5 minutes for a page from SharePoint to load. And I could never connect with Microsoft’s new Office SharePoint Designer because of timeouts. It felt like back in the day when we would do support with PCAnywhere thru a dial up connection. Now I have downloaded Virtual PC 2007 and I also used VMware converter to convert it to a VMware format. In order to assure that in the future I can spend my time wisely, I want to run a number of tests comparing the 2 major players in the market.

These tests are not official and times may/will vary depending on what else you have running, the resources you have allocated, and the OS you are using. The times should also not be considered to be exact. These are just my experiences with VMware and Virtual PC 2007.

Test	Virtual PC	VMware
Startup	61 Sec.	55 Sec.
Load SharePoint in Browser (From Remote Computer)	8 Sec.	8 Sec.
Load SQL 2005 Management Studio	26 Sec.	4 Sec.
Connect w/ SharePoint Designer	20 Sec.	9 Sec.
Sound Quality	Never could get it working	Excellent
Shutdown	146 Sec.	38 Sec.
Runs On	Windows	Windows Linux

Downloads

VMware Converter
VMPlayer
VMApplicances
MS Virtual PC 2007