Turn any PC into a Virtual Machine
Lindsay Donaghe got a new laptop but didn't want to lose all of the stuff her old laptop when she
got a new one, so she came up with a novel solution: She turned the old one into a virtual
machine. On her blog she's written a short how-to that explains how to make your old computer live inside your new
one using VMWare (and, when the trial runs out, the free VMWare Player). The process is pretty straightforward but does
take some effort. Make sure to check out the comments on her post for some additional tips.[Via Digg]












Comments
4
Subscribe to commentsLindsayJan 19th 2006 11:14PM
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for the ping to my tutorial! I hope that people will find it useful. It's been a good solution for me so far and not hard to do, but it's easier learning from other peoples' mistakes so I figured I'd document mine. Happy Virtualization! :)
FranklinJan 19th 2006 11:16PM
I'm a little unclear as to why one would want to do this. I read her article, and it sounds like a lot of hassle setting up VMWare to do this. Why didn't she just put the same effort into listing the various things she needed to move over to her new notebook instead (bookmarks, addressbook, emails, IM buddy lists, etc.)? It sounds like doing the latter would have taken as much time, if not less, to do.
Jordan RunningJan 19th 2006 11:20PM
To each his (and her) own, Franklin, but it's been my experience that no matter how carefully you plan, you always forget something in the transition to a new machine. This way you can keep the whole thing around for, say, six months, until you're really sure nothing's missing.
phizmJan 20th 2006 12:38AM
It's a good idea for the right person; esp. if your new laptops got XP but ur old ones running 98/2000 or something along those lines.
Though it's a bit of a space hog.
Nothing beats well planed regular scheduled backups.