| Table 1: Features Comparison for VMware Workstation 4 and Virtual PC 2004 | ||
| Feature | VMware Workstation | Virtual PC |
| Supported host OSs | Windows 2003 Web Edition Windows 2003 Standard Edition Windows 2003 XP Pro SP1 XP Home SP1 Win2K Server SP1 Win2K AS SP1 Win2K Pro SP1 NT Server 4.0 SP6a NT Workstation 4.0 SP6a NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition (WTS) Mandrake Linux 8.2 and later Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 and later Red Hat Linux 7.0 and later SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 and later SuSE Linux 7.3 and later |
Win2K Pro XP Pro |
| Supported guest OSs | Windows 2003 Web Edition Windows 2003 Standard Edition Windows 2003 XP Pro XP Home Win2K Server Win2K AS Win2K Pro NT Server 4.0 SP6a NT Workstation 4.0 SP6a WTS SP6a Windows Me Win9x Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 Windows 3.1 MS-DOS 6.x Mandrake Linux 9.0 and Mandrake Linux 8.2 Red Hat Linux 7.0 and late Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 SuSE Linux 7.3 and later Turbolinux Server 8.0 and Turbolinux 7.0 Turbolinux Workstation 8.0 Novell NetWare 6.0 and 5.1 FreeBSD 4 and later |
Win2K Pro NT 4.0 Windows Me Win9x MS-DOS 6.22 OS/2 Warp 4 (Fix Pack 15) OS/2 Warp Convenience Pack 1 and later |
| Maximum RAM per VM | 1GB | 3.6GB |
| Maximum RAM all VMs | 1GB | 4GB |
| Graphics support | VGA and SVGA (must install VMware Tools) | VGA and SVGA (must install VM Additions) |
| IDE drives | 4 | 3 |
| ISO CD-ROM support | Yes | Yes |
| SCSI devices | 7 | No |
| Disk drives | 2 | 1 |
| Network adapters | 3 | 4 |
| Serial ports | 4 | 2 |
| Parallel ports | 2 | 2 |
| USB ports | 2 | None |
| Sound | SoundBlaster emulation | SoundBlaster |
| emulation | ||
| Networking | None, Host-Only, Bridged, and NAT | Not connected, Localonly, Virtual networking, and Shared networking (NAT) |