Christmas has come early for users of VirtualBox, a free and open source virtualization solution from Sun Microsystems. Version 2.1 is a huge upgrade to the product as it includes VT-x and AMD-V hardware virtualization support on OS X and full VMDK/VHD support — including snapshots — putting it on par (at least from a hardware perspective) with Parallels and VMware.

This release also includes support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems and experimental 3D acceleration. Networking performance has been boosted and there have been many smaller bug-fixes and enhancements.
VirtualBox has support for a wide range of guest operating systems and there is an extensive number of live, pre-built images (VDIs) that are ready to run.
If you only have occasional need to run Windows, Linux or alternative operating systems but do not want to pay for a full VMware or Parallels license, VirtualBox is a great alternative.
Be sure to check out their Mac-specific forums if you run into any quirks or difficulties. I’ve found the community to be very helpful and responsive and run a few flavors of Linux in VDIs primarily to be able to take them anywhere (VirtualBox is cross-platform). While it does not have as extensive of an integration between the guest and host systems and there is no support for OS X virtualization yet, VirtualBox is a solid product with a promising future.
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