Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2

For sometime now the company I work for has been using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2. It has it’s problems but as a whole it’s a very powerful application. We just recently installed Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2, it hasn’t disappointed us. The Machine Manager is a program that you install on individual machines. It is different from Virtual PC 2007 as it is like Virtual Server it shows the VM status (running, stopped etc). It is very user friendly, unlike Virtual Server which was not straight forward and very finicky.

The main motivator for why we moved from Virtual Server 2005 to Virtual Machine Manager 2007 was for its save points feature. Yes Virtual Server has save points I do realize, but with Machine Manager you can save multiple points and label them. When you want to go back in time you can choose a past point and go back as far as you need (reminds me of restore points in Windows XP).

Another major change in Machine Manager is the way that it makes disks and stores them. No more differencing disks! I hate differencing disks. My dislike for them was spawned from my inability to re-organize disk because of there reliance to there parent disk. With a differencing disk if the parent disk becomes corrupt or is deleted or moved all of the child disks will no longer function. The new Machine Manager makes a full copy of the parent disk and then stores both the disk and the machines config file in it’s own independent folder. You can move the folder anywhere you like and it will still work like it always has.

I highly recommend Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2007. It is still in beta but in a whole it hasn’t been too buggy. Here is the link to download the Beta 2 Evaluation version. I don’t know how much the full version will be when it is released but you can try it out for now. Tell me what your opinion of the program is, leave me a comment.

- Kevin C -

Joost Self-Invite

You can now invite yourself to Joost if you don’t have an account yet!

Follow this link: https://joost.com/presents/gigaom-newteevee/

Please note that Joost is seeming to have traffic issues today and some requests are not going though. I got an error 500 message about 5 times before seeing the invites page.

- Kevin C -

Pidgin 2.0 Available Today!

The long wait is over! Pidgin 2.0 is available today. This has been a long awaited release of the open source instant messenger program. If you read though Pidgin’s blog you will discover the reason for the wait was because of the lawsuit AOL had against them for using the name Gaim (Notice the aim in Gaim… how Laim). Anyways for more information about that lawsuit Click Here. To read a complete review of Pidgin 2.0 Click Here. To download this awesome release Click Here!

- Kevin C -