≡ Menu

My review of VMware Free Player 3.0 and tutorial on creating a virtual machine.

VMware Click on Create a New Virtual Machine

VMware released it’s latest VMware player which is free for users to use. It is a strip down version of VMware Workstation which is VMware paid virtualization software.

 The biggest improvement in VMware player is the ability to easily create VMware Virtual Machines from an Install CD, or an CD ISO image file that you can download online or make from a CD with an ISO maker like MagicISO. This feature was not available in previous version of VMware player. You can still download VMware virtual applications and run them in VMware player like older version.

What I like most about VMware player is that I can run Ubuntu 9.04 in Full Screen mode in a Virtual Machine which I can’t with Sun’s Virtual Box, or MS Virtual PC 2007  on my PC. VMware player runs decently on my computer which has a Intel Core2Dou 1.8 GHz CPU and 1GB of DDR2 RAM.  VMware player can also recognize my USB drives which Virtual PC and Virtual Box had trouble recognizing. 

VMware player 3.0 is a great virtualization software for a home users who want to try to learn a Linux Distro like Ubuntu without making any physical changes to their hard drive by partitioning it for installing Ubuntu, so it saves the user time by not having the user backup their data, defrag their hard drive, and repartiton their drive or install a new one. VMware Virtaul machine drives are also easy to backup or delete if something goes wrong. Virtualization an Operating System is also good for running programs which you do not trust, or you don’t plan to use once a school course is over like Visual Studios. If it is installed on the virtual machine OS, it won’t affect your regular Windows OS because the virtual machine is in its own file.

What I dislike is it installed a few extra services in services.msc, and a startup entry in the startup tab of MSConfig. I give VMware.

I give VMware player 4.5/5 stars.

Tutorial on creating a virtual machine from a CD or Disk Image.What you will need: Operating System install CD or Operating System install ISO like Ubuntu.

 

1. Start VMware player and click on “Create a New Virtual Machine”  button.

VMware Click on Create a New Virtual Machine

VMware Click on Create a New Virtual Machine

2. Click ISO radio button click browse or insert CD and click CD radio button.

click ISO radio button click browse or insert CD and click CD radio button.

click ISO radio button click browse or insert CD and click CD radio button.

 3. Click on your Operating System ISO file or click next if using a CD.

browse to your CD OS ISO file

browse to your CD OS ISO file4. Click NextClick Next

5. Pick OS type and press next.

Pick OS type and press next

Pick OS type and press next

 6. Name your OS and Click Next.

Name your OS and Click Next

Name your OS and Click Next

 7. Type in the amount of space you want to use for your virtual drive see the recommended minimum hard drive requirements from your OS manual to know what to type in the text box. Click Next

type in the amount of space you want to use for your virtual drive

type in the amount of space you want to use for your virtual drive

8. Click finish.

Click finish

Click finish

9. Wait for your OS to load and begin your install.

Wait for your OS to load and begin your install.

Wait for your OS to load and begin your install.

 You are done, so now you can enjoy using a different OS within the OS you usually use by using Virtualization.

You also might be interested in reading these virtualization tutorials:

VMware Player Tuturial
Learn how to run Ubuntu Linux Distro within Windows without the need to partition/ modify your hard drive.
All you need is VMware player, a VMware player image file loaded with Ubuntu.

Tutorial for seting up a new virtual drive for Sun Virtual Box
This tutorial shows you the steps you need to take to prepare virtual box for making a new virtual drive, so you can virtualize a Operating System within Windows without the need to modify your physical hard drive.

2 comments… add one
  • Laura M August 30, 2010, 8:33 pm

    My real trouble is swapping in and out of the VM. Do you have any tutorials or tips on that part of it? Cheers 🙂

  • Johnson Yip August 30, 2010, 8:52 pm

    There is usually a short cut key for swapping in and out of the VM. I’m not sure what the shortcut key is for VMware, so you need to look in the help files or ask for support from VMware. For VirtualBox Virtual Machine. The button is right-CTRL key on your keyboard.

Leave a Comment