Virtually There
Are PC’s and Macs doomed
because of emulation?
Don’t put the nails in the coffin yet. Emulators are still a
long way off from replacing physical PC’s. Emulation has occurred for years –
more than twenty to be exact. And in the corporate world these options provide
scalable, secure alternatives to PC’s.
Virtual Machines Solve Problems in the Enterprise and the Home
As healthcare, banking and energy become more and more
inundated with regulatory constraints the desire to use virtual technologies
will probably increase. The emulation point is what is being emulated and where
the emulation occurs. Even if the whole thing happens on your physical hard
drive you have a “guest” and a “host”.
So, for instance, if you have a Dell Windows Latitude laptop
and you want to emulate say a Mac or Red Hat Linux then the Guest virtual
machine would be created on the heard drive of your Dell laptop. Launch the
emulation software and then the Guest and suddenly you’re whisked magically
into a Mac or a Red Hat Linux environment.
Emulation: Isn’t It Overkill?
Why emulate when the “real thing” is out there? The reality
is that not everyone can or wants two to five systems on their physical desk.
That gets cumbersome plus what do you do about a keyboard and mouse. You can
buy switches (also called a “KVM” switch), however, those options are expensive
– almost all of them. In fact some people who talk about the expense of
emulation forget about the real cost of having more than one physical device
sitting on your desk.
Marathon Martha the Grandma Doesn’t Need Virtual Machines or Does She?
Why would the ordinary mortal want more than one operating
system on a desk? For software developers and those who develop content for
various operating systems emulation is absolutely essential. What looks fine on
one platform may not work at all on another. But what about for grandma who
does genealogy you ask? I do genealogy as a hobby. Some of the Windows software
for genealogy purposes is “better” on a Windows machine, but a Mac for some is
easier to use. So how do you solve this dilemma? By creating a Windows virtual
machine on the Mac. Even for low-tech users the idea isn’t that far-fetched or
difficult.
Gaming the System
So what about a gamer? Will emulation work for games.
Shhhhhh don’t tell the vendors. The answer is maybe. Keep in mind it is emulation. Some hardware devices aren’t
supported in an emulator meaning that no matter what you do they just won’t
work. This is the vast minority, however, most devices pass through an emulator
just fine. How do you tell? Load up the software, create a Guest, install your
software, add the hardware per the manufacturers instructions and give it a
try.
Windows and Mac OS Are Expensive
The base operating system for Windows can be pricey for the
home user. But there is a silver lining. You can often find the system released
just prior to the one you want, get it cheaper and then pay a bit for the
upgrade. On the Mac side the operating system is “free” (and legal) – once you
buy it for one Mac you can use it for others.
The Competitors in the Emulator Space
There are several competitors in the emulator space. Open
Source options do exist (such as WINE), however, these are not readily
supported by any one particular organization whereas VirtualBox (which is free)
has the heavy-up advantage of Oracle Corporation.
|
Product Name
|
Maker
|
Price
|
Link
|
Summary
|
|
VirtualBox
|
Oracle
|
FREE
|
Great
product; good documentation. No phone support. Shared clipboard works (sort
of). No synchronization.
|
|
|
Parallels
Desktop
|
Parallels
|
$80
|
Synchronization and other
advanced features. Shared clipboard
that works.
|
|
|
VMWare
Player Mac
|
VMWare
|
$189.00
|
Player
product is free; workstation product costs.
|
Bottom Line
Emulate if you have limited or special use situations. So
say you have one or two apps that you continue to need that aren’t available on
the “other” platform. Try emulation as an option. Keep in mind that you first
must have a known working operating system disk or at least an image to get
started in VirtualBox or Parallels. Read the instructions carefully. Some of
the installs are pretty easy. Have
plenty of hard drive space available. There’s nothing worse than starting an
emulator install only to run out of space. Gamers and graphics / video people –
that message was particularly for you – because you tend to underestimate what
you need to make your apps and your output happy.
If you’re a “doer” (in adult learning [androgogy] we call
you kinesthetic learners) by all means find a YouTube, Vimeo or a HowTo that
makes you happy. It’s not all about reading documentation. Sometimes the video
is enough to get you a good start. That being said Oracle’s VirtualBox has
pretty great documentation.
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