vmware

MacTech has just published an extensive benchmark comparison of the latest versions of Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. The article outlines in great detail the performance of each, not just regarding running popular programs and boot times, but also on file I/O, optimal host configurations, Retina display support, and a number of other important performance considerations for the virtualization packages.

While bigger may be better in some things, faster arguably takes the cake when it comes to computing. Be it booting a system or sheer number crunching, if you can do more of it at once or do it … Read more

Both Parallels Desktop 8 and VMWare Fusion 5 have just been released, with each offering similar approaches to running Windows and other operating systems within OS X.

Since their release, I have used both of these virtualization packages, and in my personal experiences they work quite well to run Windows and integrate its services and programs into OS X. Both support some of the latest features of Mountain Lion such as full-screen modes, seamless presentation of Windows applications within OS X, and easy access to your OS X files from within Windows. In my experiences with running Windows XP and … Read more

Everything is copacetic in the post-PC era, according to Michael Dell.

Speaking at VMware 2012, Dell's founder and CEO cited the fact that 380 million PCs were sold last year, adding that "the post-PC era has been pretty good for PCs so far," according to a report at Citeworld.

And as is typical at many PC-centric events, the iPad -- despite its growing popularity as a client device -- and smartphones didn't garner much attention, Citeworld said.

That is, until poll results showed the rise of "post-PC" devices as the No. 1 trend in … Read more

Both Parallels and VMware have announced the availability of the next versions of their popular virtualization software for running Windows and other operating systems within OS X. VMware Fusion 5 is available for download today, and the next version of Parallels Desktop will be released very soon on September 4.

Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion are two of several available options for running guest operating systems within OS X so you can use applications and services supported for those operating systems along with your OS X applications without having to leave OS X and boot directly to them. This approach … Read more

Security researchers have discovered a single piece of malware that is capable of spreading to four different platform environments, including Windows, Mac OSX, VMware virtual machines, and Windows Mobile devices.

First uncovered last month by security company Integro, Crisis was originally described as a Mac Trojan capable of intercepting e-mails and instant messages and tracking Web sites visited. Additional scrutiny by Symantec has found that the malware targets both OSX and Windows users with executable files for both operating systems.

Crisis is distributed using social engineering techniques designed to trick users into installing a JAR, or Java archive, file masquerading … Read more

Interest in big data continues to grow in terms of both downloads of connectors to software packages and in software infrastructure to power big data, primarily in the form of NoSQL databases and Hadoop-related extensions, according to a report.

The report, released today to coincide with the Hadoop Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., comes via open-source business intelligence provider Jaspersoft. The second-quarter report measures demand for popular data sources for storing, analyzing, and visualizing big data and uses stats from the JasperForge community site.

Key findings:

VMware today announced a new open-source project called Serengeti, which enables enterprises to quickly deploy, manage, and scale Apache Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments.

VMware says it is working with the Apache Hadoop community to contribute extensions that will make Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and Hadoop MapReduce projects "virtualization-aware" to support elastic scaling and further improve Hadoop performance in virtual environments.

In case you've been living outside the big data vacuum, open source Hadoop has emerged as the de facto standard for big data processing and is packaged up in a few different distributions by … Read more

Don't have a dedicated PC on which to install Windows 8? No problem. Just install the OS virtually on an existing PC using a free virtual machine utility.

Various VM applications will let you install an operating system in a virtual environment on your Windows desktop or laptop. But not all are free and not all support the latest Windows 8 beta.

A product such as VMWare Workstation 8 supports Windows 8 but costs $200. Microsoft's own Windows Virtual PC is free but won't accept Windows 8 as a guest.

Instead, you can use Oracle's VirtualBox … Read more

VMware delivered a strong fourth quarter and raised its outlook for 2012.

The virtualization leader reported fourth-quarter earnings of $200 million, or 46 cents a share, on revenue of $1.06 billion, up 27 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 62 cents a share. Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP earnings of 60 cents a share on revenue of $1.05 billion.

For 2011, VMware reported earnings of $724 million, or $1.68 a share, on revenue of $3.77 billion.

As for the outlook, VMware projected first-quarter sales in a range between $1.015 billion and $1.… Read more