If you want to try a new operating system, but don’t want to put your computer and data to the risk of being corrupted, virtual machines can come in handy. They are small programs simulating to be a completely independent system with CPU, GPU, memory, HDD, DVD drive and so on and can run another operating system parallel to the one you’re actually using.

There are three major virtual machines out there: VMware Player, Sun VirtualBox and Microsoft VirtualPC. I took a look at all of them and compared their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to read the full review, have a look at the posts below:

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #1 Microsoft Virtual PC

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #2 Sun Virtual Box

Assessing Virtual Machine Performance: #3 VMware Player

I will also write a short summary of each VM in this post, but for now the detailed reviews should be enough.