Virtual PC getting better compared to VMware (about VMware 6.0 bloat)

So far, I've been mostly using VMware Workstation as my playground for virtual machines, but after installing VMware Workstation 6, I noticed that Virtual PC 2007 still has its uses.

One thing that is problematic with the latest version of VMware Workstation 6 is that it takes over 700 MB of disk space to install. Wow, Virtual PC 2007 is much smaller, around 35 MB. Quite a difference!

Of course, I wanted to immediately check why such amounts of disk space are needed by VMware. Turns out that the "pkg" directory is very large, over 400 MB, and can be safely deleted. Or at least, I haven't noted any change in functionality after giving the Shift+Del to the directory. Further, you can save even more space by deleting the .ISO files from the VMware root installation directory, maybe leaving only Windows.iso there (which is the installation CD for VMware Tools).

Now, what does this have to do with Virtual PC? Well, so far VMware has been quite far ahead of Virtual PC (at least in my opinion), but now it turns out Virtual PC is much slicker, and easier and faster to install. And, Virtual PC supports pasting text to the virtual machine by emulating keystrokes. Great for typing in those serial numbers while installing the operating system. :-)