Having a VM is so nice, when you're in the middle of coding but your wife is calling you, your kid wants to play with you, or you just need to go to sleep, all you need to do is press Pause on the VM (or Save State, or whatever).
Then later, when you're in the mood to code again, you can press Resume on the VM (or Restore State, or whatever).
When you want to install non-RTM software like SQL Server 2008 , you can press Take Snapshot. Then when that non-RTM software messes up your old stable SQL Server 2005 configurations, you can always press Restore Snapshot.
But recently what's bugging me is VM performance...
This is my work laptop that my (current) company gave me:
- Intel Core2 Duo CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz.
- Memory 4GB RAM.
- Hard Disk 100GB / 7200 rpm.
- Graphics ATI Mobility FireGL V5250 / 256 MB VRAM.
Basically it's a Lenovo Thinkpad T60p. And this is what Windows Experience Vista 32-bit gave me for my work laptop:
You think that's good?
Well, this is the specs of my home / weekend laptop:
- Intel Core2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
- Memory 2GB RAM.
- Hard Disk 250GB / 5400 rpm.
- Graphics GeForce 8600M GT / 512 MB VRAM.
Who would have guessed? It's basically a 15" MacBook Pro. And this is what Windows Experience Vista 32-bit gave me for my MacBook Pro:
The Vista is running on VMWare Fusion 1.0 in my MacBook Pro. But for a VM, it's amazing how the VM's 5400rpm hard disk beats my native 7200rpm hard disk for data transfer rate.
So here's some wishful thinking (when I get the money, I will make the wish come true though :P ):
Now when that wish becomes true, I will actually have a faster Vista running on VM compared to the Vista running native on my company laptop :)
Oh, and I can have a 5-second Vista startup because I will always Pause and Resume my VM instead of shutting it down...