I wanted to ask if its a good idea since I have been thinking about it before windows 8 hits the shelves and I reinstall everything all over..."once again". I could see a benefit of it being the ultimate backup tool, and switching snapshots without loss of data. I use Vmware, but I haven't ventured that far into trying it myself yet. Hows the performance? Pros? Cons?

Many people use Virtual Machines for accessing the internet (from their DAW). In the event of virus etc. you can simply delete the VM and "rebuild" the VM without affecting the state of your DAW.

Almost forgot I posted this lol. I just hope its smooth sailing when I do try. I'd hate to install a bunch of stuff open my projects and it turns out sluggish.

I like the avatar.

I knew a girl that looked like that once.  I took her to the opticians, that soon cured it.

By their nature virtual machines add a layer of processing between the application and the OS. I can not see any reason to use a VM to run a DAW, and the decrease in processing speed might result in problems. Maybe a fast enough machine would be able to overcome that handicap, but why? If you want to back up, it makes more sense to use an imaging program and move the old system onto another drive/partition than to use a VM.

Yeah, slart has the right of it.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression in my post that one would use a VM as the DAW. I meant that the VM is used exclusively as the net access point. IOW the VM is installed in the DAW OS and the VM is only fired up when net access is required. Hence my statement "if a virus is gotten" it infects the VM install and not the DAW. 

HTH.

I hear CJ even has virtual studios...

craigb


I hear CJ even has virtual studios...

At least one.

slartabartfast


By their nature virtual machines add a layer of processing between the application and the OS. I can not see any reason to use a VM to run a DAW, and the decrease in processing speed might result in problems. Maybe a fast enough machine would be able to overcome that handicap, but why? If you want to back up, it makes more sense to use an imaging program and move the old system onto another drive/partition than to use a VM.

+1

I've never even attempted to set up a VM for this reason alone.

I have a dual boot setup for running legacy apps that I still like to use under XP and a W7 partition as my main boot partition.  It takes roughly 10 minutes to image them both and about the same to restore either one and they are the actual OS's not virtual ones.

It's really simple to swap around OS's without having to resort to another layer of complexity.

Jonbouy
It's really simple to swap around OS's without having to resort to another layer of complexity. 

Agreed.