InfoWorld: VMware opens way to virtual worlds

"For many businesses, the next several months will be less about making it big and more about making do. Because many employees, such as developers, salespeople, and training staff, require the use of several OSes, IT managers looking to save cash should consider consolidating their operating systems at the desktop. Indeed, installing multiple OSes on one computer can save a bundle in hardware and support expenses.

Until now, there have been unfortunate constraints to loading multiple OSes onto a single machine, and these often outweigh the method's supposed ease of implementation. Because most OSes are usually installed in separate, and not always compatible, disk partitions, data created under one OS is sometimes unavailable to another.

Even with OSes such as Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Professional, which can share the same partition, users often hit frustrating walls when installing new software. Upgrading to Windows XP, for example, could prove laborious, time-consuming, and ultimately unsuccessful due to conflicts between the two commingling systems. Adjusting these situations for success sometimes requires reloading every scrap of data onto the system."

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