What software to use for virtual machine for Windows development?

Question

For my side job as programmer, I need Windows. It will be installed in VMWare Fusion. I will be writnig mostly C-code for Matlab-Mex-files, some DSP-development, some easy command-line tools in C and C++ for a tutorial and hopefully some easy GUIs using Visual Studio. I will be using VisualDSP++, Bloodshed Dev-Cpp, the Matlab mex-compiler and Visual Studio.
The virtual machine will mainly have to run on a MacBook 2,1 GHz / 4 Gb.

Now here are my questions:

• should I use Vista or XP? I like the first better, but worry about the performance, especially using Visual Studio.
• should I use Visual Studio 2008 Pro or Express? I wouldn't want to waste memory for features I don't use. (== is there useful stuff in the pro version for GUI development?)

Thanks for your opinions!

Answer 1

Well. You have 4gig of ram in that MacBook, then Vista should be okay - and maybe even be faster in VS, if you give it about 2gig of your ram.

And about the version of Visual Studio, then the Express should be more fine. There is no GUI differences in the tools (that i know off, I only work in .NET, not in native)

Answer 2

If you are really worried about performance you could dual boot with boot camp. In addition to that I believe that Parallels has bootcamp support, so you can even virtualise your Windows partition.

Having said that if you are going to virtualise I would recommend that you use XP, purely because you can't take advantage of graphics hardware for all the flashy effects in vista. If you do choose vista I would recommend that you turn aero off.

As for the version of visual studio 2008, you should find out what you need it for (you indicated that you already use dev-c++) and pick the version that supports all of your required features. While I'm at it I will also suggest you check out eclipse and the CDT if you are sussing out new IDEs.

Just as a final tip, if you want to utilise the full 4Gb of ram, you will need a 64bit OS.

Good Luck.

Answer 3

I would also go for WinXP, mdec already said it, you will not be able to use the Auro interface and if it is only for development you're not going to miss the 'fancy' features... WinXp uses less resources and any Mb of RAM will be useful on this setup.

To answer the Vistual Studio question, most of the time the Express editions are sufficient, but a -for me- missing key feature is the support for AddIns... There are many great AddIns that improve your productivity like ReSharper, GhostDoc, Mole and many more... see previous post

Answer 4

It's worth your time to try VirtualBox. It's free and the speed of both Vista and XP under VirtualBox is astounding. I run both XP and Vista under VirtualBox on OS X and they seem to be at near-native speed. Perhaps because there are fewer drivers at work in the virtualized environment.

I usually get away with 512 megs of RAM to a Vista VM and 256 megs to XP. That way you can run multiple VMs at once and still have plenty of system RAM for open browsers and such.

Easy command-line tools and simple GUIs can be done with the Express edition of Visual Studio. Stick with that until you outgrow it.

Answer 5

Vista will fly on that laptop.

As for visual studio versions, Pro has the ability to edit resource files for C/C++ development so you can manually drag and drop your controls into position. This is disabled in the express edition, although you could use an external tool called ResEd instead.