However, I have read several times that VirtualBox is faster. I didn't measure the performance difference between Virtual PC and VirtualBox myself. Moreover, VirtualBox can be installed on Windows, Apple OS X, Linux, and Solaris. If you like to look beyond the Windows horizon every now and then, then VirtualBox is certainly the better choice. VirtualBox on the other hand isn't that choosy about the guest OS.

But many report problems and it is not officially supported. You might be able to get Linux running on Virtual PC if you are a geek. There is an emulation for the PowerPC-based Mac OS X, but as far as I know you can't run the x86 edition. Virtual PC supports only Windows as guest OS. Support for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Solaris as guest OS ^ I hope the next release will bring this feature. You might also recognize slower video output without the guest additions. Basically, this means that there is no clipboard support (you can't use copy and paste text between host and guest) and there is no seamless mouse integration (you have to press STRG to leave the VM with the mouse pointer). I ran Windows Server 2008 R2 on VirtualBox and it worked fine just the virtual machine additions are not yet supported. Thus, Virtual PC is no option if you want to try Microsoft's latest server operating system. You probably know that there is no 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2. VirtualBox supports 64-bit hosts and guests.

It is hard to believe but Virtual PC 2007 SP1 doesn't support 64-bit guest operating systems. Virtualbox's snapshot feature is as powerful as VMware Workstation's.

You can also create snapshots while the virtual machine is running. This way, you can save states of your virtual machines the same way you store different versions of a text document. Virtual PC 2007 SP1 has an undo function which can be considered as a single snapshot. One of the biggest advantages of running software tests in a virtual environment is that you can create a snapshot of a stable configuration which allows you to go back to that point in time if you mess up your system.

Virtualbox windows vista 64 bit