VMware: Player, Workstation, Server?

Free
Allows you to run guest virtual machines produced by other VMware products: it cannot itself create new virtual machines. VMware provides free virtual disk images of several pre-configured operating systems and applications, many of them community-contributed. Freeware tools and websites (such as EasyVMX [1]) also exist for creating VMs, mounting, manipulating and converting VMware disks and floppies, permitting users to create, run and maintain virtual machines free of charge (even for commercial use).

 

VMware Server can create, edit, and play virtual machines. It uses a client-server model [2], allowing remote access to virtual machines, at the cost of some graphical performance (and 3D [3] support). In addition to the ability to run virtual machines created by other VMware products, it can also run virtual machines created by Microsoft Virtual PC [4]. VMware Inc. makes VMware Server freely available in the hope that users will eventually upgrade [5] to VMware ESX Server.

 

 

NOT Free
This software suite allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual computers and to use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system [6]. Each virtual machine instance can execute its own guest operating system, such as (but not limited to) Windows [7], Linux [8], and BSD variants [9]. In simple terms, VMware Workstation allows one physical machine to run two or more operating systems simultaneously. VMware Workstation also allows the testing of LiveCDs [10] without first burning [11] them onto physical discs or rebooting [12] the computer. One can also take multiple successive snapshots of an operating system running under VMware Workstation. Each snapshot allows you to roll back the virtual machine to the saved status at any time.