Hello from 8

Thanks, Joe. Might take a look @ it, soon. No worries, as I've not had any prior VMware... Just Microsoft VPC, followed by Windows VPC; well & the go w/ VB & I'm not too keen on it.

Drew

I just did not like the hit to how quickly Win 8 DP ran in a VM. At the time I had 4 GB Ram with half allocated to the VM and half to the host (Win 7). I have since upgraded to 8 GB Ram, but am now pleased with my dual boot system so do not have the time now to play with the VM again. Under the dual boot senario, Win 8 DP runs very quickly, just as Win 7 does. When the beta is released, I suspect I will just install directly over the DP and continue in the dual boot senario. Perhaps if I ever want to play with Linux again, the VM will be the way to go.

Ted, I went through the same thing when beta testing Vista & Win7 for Microsoft. Faster as a dual-boot than as a VM. I do find 8 fast as a VM, except for starting up; once it's loaded & running it's fast... But, by the time I get to running say the RTM as a non-vm, I'm expecting the speed will be mind-blowing.

Of course, with 8G RAM, how could it possibly be slow Heck, I only assigned 1G to my Win8 Dev Preview vm & the Host Box has 4G, but, the Win8 is still pretty darned quick.

Cheers,
Drew

Actually VMware recommends 1 gig ram for workstation. They say assiginig to much actually slows down the VM.
Joe

I just found this and thought you guys might find it interesting Dual Boot Windows 8 from VHD using Windows Setup | Concurrency Blog I just took a quick look at it.
Joe

Oh, now that does sound enticing...

Drew

I might have tried this after discarding VM. Now I am pretty happy with the dual boot senario. I do not see any obvious advantage to using this method, but then again I am new to this entire VM experience.

The real advantage is not having the hassle of creating a real partition. Some factory units already have so many partitions that you can't add another one that is bootable. I hear Dell is good at that. I'll try it as soon as I get the time. I made the Virtual HD and have the ISO burned to disk.
Joe

Ted,

Basically there are 2 advantages. 1) as Joe said, it avoids being able (ie having an available partion or drive) to install the (test) OS on it's own, separate real estate & 2) it overcomes all & any limitations of a traditional VM (ie uses & access fully the same hardware,etc. as, say, the main Windows 7 OS. Nor does the method use up any significant space & it, also, avoids even needing to have any virtual software like, Windows VPC, VirtualBox, VMware or whatever.

Cheers,
Drew

Well I got it installed and working on the virtual hard disk. I hate the tiles I'll look into customizing it later. I'll have to do some exploring on it. Otherwise it seems to run good. I'll have to see what other tweaks from Windows 7 still work like starting without password.
Joe