[plug] Windows guest VM's

[Brad Campbell]

G'day all,

I often have a need to fire up a Windows VM for work (Autocad, Protel, 
Coolpack, etc).

For years I've been using a base XP machine because it was small and 
snappy. Recently though I've been using AutoCAD for more than just 
viewing and printing drawings and it has not been fun at all.

For a test I set up a 64 bit Windows 7 VM and installed the 64 bit 
Autocad in that. The performance difference between the XP and the Win 7 
VM is night and day. I am astonished at how much more responsive the Win 
7 VM is. Then again, it uses about 4 times the CPU time compared to an 
XP VM, but for interactive foreground stuff it is *much* nicer.

If you can tolerate the extra CPU cycles and the much increased disk 
footprint, Win 7 is a better bet than XP for a VM guest.

Spice with the qxl driver is a nice upgrade from VNC too (performance 
and arbitrary auto-sizing resolution support). It even outperforms an 
rdp session straight to the windows VM on a local network.

Just an observation that I thought was worth mentioning.