I have partitioned my hard disk in 16 Gb for "programs", 16 Gb for "data" and the rest for "backup". If something goes wrong in the envrionment I can with Acronis restore the "programs" partition in under 5 minutes and then copy from the "data" which is holding an encrypted container all the data back to "my documents". The whole process, inclusive rebooting, takes under 10 minutes. Vista is supposedly transferable between different hardware except you'll need re-activation of the license (yuk) and restoring it will not be as fast due to the much larger size of the installation. I really like the transferability that a virtual machine offers: you can go as far as using a 16 Gb flash media (or one of the ready boost USB memory sticks but I believe it is not as fast because it has to share with other USB devices) and have your total virtual environment on that. Thanks for the other information on your setup; it is very usefull to get an alternative view on what can be done. Am pleased to hear that TWS will run fine under Ubuntu and that there is little difference in performance between VMware and Virtual Box and that actually VB is more stable. Maria
Cliff5200 Tried OpenSolaris on the T61p and have some hardware issues ( e.g. audio not working which is a pain for alerts ) Next two to try out are Ubuntu Hardy LT and OpenSuse 11.0. (the Thinkpad Z61m that I have is certified for SLED 10.3 so openSuse should run straight out of the box) I have a question: Under XP I have TWS "pinned" to stay on top of my charting. If I have TWS running under Ubuntu and am running a program in XP under in Virtual Box will then TWS still stay pinned on top (in other words overlap the charting program running under XP in Virtual Box) many thanks in advance, Maria
The VM (in this case Winxp) runs in a window or full screen (your choice). If you run the VM in a window then that window could be on top of or under your TWS just like any other window but the whole WinXP and everything that is running on it (all applications) are in that window. The window is just like your WinXP screen basically. In full screen mode your WinXP VM screen takes over your entire screen and you cant see Ubuntu at all. I do this sometimes with my multi monitor setup, I have WinXP full screen on one of the screens and Ubuntu on the other screen. You can not drag applications that are running in the WinXP window and put them on the Ubuntu screen. WinXP applications stay on the WinXP window or screen.
I have another question - VMware purely uses software emulation where Virtual Box can both use software and hardware. I am inclined to enable the virtualisation bit on the laptops but there is also a software setting in VB (if I understand it correctly). Have you noticed much difference in speed and or stability one way or another? Many thanks for your help. PS did you see the PM I did send you? Maria
When you enable the hardware visualization in VirtualBox (if you have a newer Intel or AMD processor that supports it) it allows the processor to run with lower overhead and do a lot of the switching between the host OS and the guest OS in hardware. There is a noticeable speed improvement.
Also,,, I think that most machines have a bios setting that will enable or disable the hardware visualization. You have to enable this in the bios settings of your machine. Then in Virualbox settings you have to enable the setting so that VirtualBox knows to use the hardware.
Thumbs up for this product, all works out of the box: finger print, power manager , audio, wireless, bluetooth etc. Initially I thought the fan was not switching off but that was not true: it does switch off but it runs the T61p a bit cooler than that XP / Vista does (a tad more often on). Then when getting Mac4Lin theme and installing that it feels and looks like a Mac. whoa Now see if I can get TradeStation, Global server and HyperServer working nicely with each other under 'Cross over Linux' from www.codeweavers.com. Maria