I have been an advocate of VMware Server (v1.0) having used it for the past three or so years now as my virtual development platform. The performance, networking, and user experience have all been good enough. I have accumulated a decent library of platforms, server products, developer tools, and client environments that I can call upon whenever needed. I especially liked the USB support which came in handy when working with RFID devices.

Recently I got around to installing the latest version (v2.0 beta) ...oh dear .

Ok, it was only beta but it lost all the attributes that I mentioned as good points above. Performance was noticeably poorer (perhaps beta related), the revamped networking might be ok after a training course, and most importantly the user experience was totally shite. VMware moved away from the remote console being a Rich UI application (that had its faults but got the job done well enough) to a browser-based console. Why? I thought the industry has have moved on from this already .

So, I have finally conceded to (and coped a few ha-ha's from colleagues) to move my virtualisation platform over to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. No small job as I will have to convert (rebuild) all my VM's. In the meantime, I am running Virtual Server 2005 R2 on the laptop to "ease" myself into the new platform.