VMware Workstation 5.0 for Windows

Other products by VMware, Inc.

Product Features

• Desktop virtualization software for software developers and IT professionals
• Streamline software development, testing, and deployment
• Enhances productivity; test software in virtual machines prior to deployment
• Safely share development environments and pre-packaged testing configurations
• Transform physical IT infrastructure into virtual infrastructure

Product Details

Product Manual [16.24mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0009NF9LS
• Item model number: WS5-ENG-W-CP
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,197 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #4 in	Software > Networking > Virtual Private Networks
  #15 in	Software > Utilities > Cross Platform

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

VMware Workstation is powerful desktop virtualization software for software developers/testers and IT professionals who want to streamline software development, testing, and deployment in their enterprise. VMware Workstation allows users to run multiple x86-based operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and NetWare, and their applications simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked, portable virtual machines--no hard-drive partitioning or rebooting required.

Shipping for more than six years and winner of more than a dozen major product awards, VMware Workstation improves productivity and flexibility, and reduces costs so dramatically that it has become an indispensable tool for software development and IT professionals worldwide.

How Is VMware Workstation Used?
The powerful and flexible virtualization properties and features of VMware Workstation enable a wide range of solutions for a diverse set of users. Individuals and organizations use VMware Workstation to:

• Streamline software development and testing operations. Create multiple development and testing environments as virtual machines on a single PC and use them to test "real world" multi-tier configurations, complex networks, and multiple operating systems and applications all on a single machine.
• Improve team collaboration. The portability and hardware-independent properties of virtual machines, coupled with new features in VMware Workstation, lets users easily share development environments and pre-packaged testing configurations without risk, and also facilitates collaboration between development and QA.
• Enhance the productivity of IT professionals. Allows system administrators and other enterprise IT professionals to test software, including new applications, application updates, and operating system patches, in virtual machines prior to deployment on physical PCs or servers in a production environment. IT help desk departments can create and reference a virtual library of end-user configurations to help them resolve problems more quickly.
• Introduce virtual infrastructure to your enterprise. Virtual machines created in Workstation can be deployed to the other desktop and server virtualization platforms offered by VMware. Introducing VMware Workstation virtualization to the desktop is an ideal first step to transforming your physical IT infrastructure into virtual infrastructure.

How Does VMware Workstation Work?
VMware Workstation works by creating fully isolated, secure virtual machines that encapsulate an operating system and its applications. The VMware virtualization layer maps the physical hardware resources to the virtual machine's resources, so each virtual machine has its own CPU, memory, disks, and I/O devices, and is the full equivalent of a standard x86 machine. VMware Workstation installs onto the host operating system and provides broad hardware support by inheriting device support from the host.

Product Description

VMware Workstation is powerful desktop virtualization software for software developers/testers and IT professionals who want to streamline software development, testing and deployment in their enterprise. VMware Workstation allows users to run multiple x86-based operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and NetWare, and their applications simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked, portable virtual machines — no hard drive partitioning or rebooting required.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Future of Computing with Multiple OSs at the Same Time is Here! (Can also boot Mac OSX on a PC!!!), March 31, 2006

By	OverTheMoon ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Now we can truly virtualize as many Operating Systems (OSs) as we like on a modern rig, all with full networking capabilities that run anywhere between 100% and 75% of the speed as if the OS was actually hard installed on the system. However when we are talking systems with above 512 MB of RAM and better than 2.0 Ghz, you are never going to go with a single OS machine or a multiboot/dualboot when you have seen VMware in action. I have booted Windows XP (you can boot Win 3.1, Win 2K also if you want), Linux Slackware (one of the unsupported Linux distros that works and I don't see why all Linux versions should work), FreeBSD6 (6 is unsupported but works), Solaris 10 (no problem) and I have personally seen the Apple MAC OS X Tiger running on it, but running OSx86 is illegal. However I have seen it on VMware on a PC. You can load all this on a notebook and have all of these OSs running on it at the same time, even full screen mode and it just looks so unreal, the kind of stuff that moves your soul when you see OSx86 with networking running on a PC Laptop. The fact you can toggle between the OSs without needing to boot only one OS and the presence of OSx86 makes this an absolute must. A few things need to be noted though. Sometimes you should use VIRTUAL IDE Virtual HDDs instead of SCCIs in VMware virtual hardware setup. In VMWARE BIOS (F2) you sometimes must change large disk access mode to OTHER rather than DOS, especially for Linux systems. If you can't get proper screen resolutions sizes, install VMware Tools from VMware, right click on OSs tab, "Install VMware Tools" and this mounts the tools inside the OSs in the /cdrom drive. Copy it and install it and you should have all the resolutions you need. Anyway what are you waiting for? This is crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1.0 out of 5 stars Go with Parallels or Fusion., May 13, 2008

By	Deimos "Rock Fan" (Alberta) - See all my reviews

After using Parallels at home to triple boot OSX,Ubuntu Linux and Vista, this VMware I use at work with my XP laptop to run server 2003 for our controls system. Vista and any of the windows server version made after 2003 are unreliable. Even when just dual booting with VMware for XP and Server 2003 is really slow and thats with 3gb of ram. The product itself is pretty stable but when it freezes it freezes solid. Still cool to have two computers in one. Vmware is passible at best, Fusion is great and Parallels can't be beat for virtual machine software due to it's impressive reliability and performance compared to the others.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and Awesome, October 13, 2005

By	John or Lill Priest (Tomball, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This application is terrific. VMWare Workstation eliminates, for most applications at least, the requirement for dual or multiple boot systems. For example, you can switch operating systems with the click of a mouse button. I have actually had three operatiing systems running concurrently on my system.

From the time I loaded the VMWare CD Rom into my disk drive until I had an operational SuSe Linux running in a virtual machine under Windows 2000 Professional was less than three hours. I took a little longer to get the full functionality of Linux; however, this was my problem, not VMWare's. I see no observable performance degradation when running normal Linux applications; however, because of the limitations of the virtual display's some 3-D intensive application may not work. Note: I am running a 64-bit Athlon processor with 4-gig of ram, and 2 120 gig hard drives. One is NTFS and the other is Linux formatted. Accessing the 'real' Linux drive, and dual DVD's was easy to set up. I had no VMWare problems setting up a local network, and the connection to the internet (dial-up).

My major use for Linux is for numerically intensively computational scientific research and many of the supporting applications I need are not available as windows applications.

Another big advantage of this system is that the entire virtual system can be backed up by copying one file (at least on NT 2000).

VMWare seriously needs dual head and 3-D virtual driver support. The lack of dual head support is my only major complaint.