My Favorite Computer Program

( Image courtesy of kasunc.blogspot.com )

Curiosity has its own reason
for existing...It is enough if
one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery everyday.                                 

" Albert Einstein "

I have a couple of computers within my reach and each of them have different, as well as multiple operating systems. My personal favorite, a notebook/laptop that I do the majority of my work and studying on is a Dell Latitude D610. My operating system is BT Linux 3.2.6/Ubuntu Release 10.04 (Lucid). 

My favorite program that I have on my computer is VMware Player. When I first started tinkering around with different operating systems, I had a very bad habit of messing up systems by way of bricking hard drives ( basically wiping my computers clean of their operating systems ). Finally after what seemed like never-ending headaches and frustration, I started experimenting with trying out new software on virtual machines. 

I've used and also have Virtual Box installed on my laptop but my favorite program to use when running virtual machines is VMware Player. I find that with VMware, whenever a new release of an operating system comes out that I want to test drive, I just install the release onto my virtual machine and run it in a live environment. This way, I don't have to worry about screwing up anything on my main operating system. Here are some of the features VMware Player provides:

• It can run on Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10+ and RHEL 5 at the same time. Or even at the same time in separate windows!
• It is user-friendly and easy to install. It also makes the process of installing Windows and Linux OS's easier than if you were to install these OS's directly onto your hard drive.
• One can test new operating systems and safely try new software in an isolated environment on your PC.

Two things that I'd like this program to improve on is the ability to effortlessly network wireless and the ability to share and save files between one's actual operating system and the virtual machine. That's one aspect of the VMware Player that I feel needs to be a bit more user-friendlier.