Various virtual machines compared

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

For running Xy in a virtual machine on Win 7 64-bit, I have now tried out:

Parallels Workstation (XP)
Parallels Workstation (Win 7 32-bit)
VMware Player (XP)
VPC XP Mode (seamless and otherwise).
The good news is that they all run. All are free, except Parallels
Workstation, which costs $49 (if memory serves).
The bad news: if you are running Tame, which I could no longer live
without, you're probably going to have a long process of adjustment. I have
Tame working on all these VMs now, but had to put in maybe 20 hours on
each. Your struggle may be easier, because I've never understood Tame's
innards, and I had to learn by painful trial-and-error.
In my judgment, Parallels is considerably better than the others, at least
if you are using Tame. They do have good customer *phone* support, and you
can reach their support (in India, judging by accents) without a great
number of voice menus and with surprising little wait time. I made about 8
calls, each one lasting for 20 minutes to an hour.
Parallels offers an equivalent of "seamless" mode. They call it
"coherence," and it is an option under their View menu (which also offers:
window and full screen). It's a lot easier than seamless under VPC, because
there's no need for going in and out of hibernation mode and dealing with
VPC's \\tsclient and XPMUser (which totally confuse me). Under Parallels,
the different "modes" are just an instantaneous View menu-item selection.
Longer-term, I continue to explore NB 10. I have problems with XyWWWEB.U2,
which often gives me the error: "Missing {{" even with a file that has
nothing in it but:
;U2;

This problem is intermittent and may be unique to my system.