PC IN A BOX

Despite the success of Wine-based compatibility applications, you may still have the need to emulate a complete PC. For example, you might want to try out a Windows program that doesn’t work in Wine, set up a number of test machines without being restricted by partition tables, or just test your new website using a variety of operating systems and browsers. If so, a virtual machine is the way to go. Fake and Fool In contrast to API emulators like Wine, VMware workstation emulates a complete computer as a software program. The so-called guest operating system runs within the VMware simulation, which can’t distinguish this environment from a real PC. VMware [1], the enterprise behind the product with the same name (which became a subsidiary of EMC corporation in 2004), has Linux and Windows variants of the emulator. The boxed version costs US$ 199 in the VMware store [2]; the download variant costs just 10 dollars less [3].