This is just a weekend venting session...
Why can't I find the features I need in a single solution? I have a virtualization host I use at home. I have a number of deveopment tools that still require Windows (AVR Studio, IAR MSP430 Compiler, etc). I use a Windows XP VM for each of these tools. For a long time I was hosting these VMs on my workstation. This worked well except that I could really only run one or two at any give time. Hence the move to the VM host. It's an 8 core system with 48GB of memory and handles the job well.
Now for my rant... USB... specifically remote USB sharing. VirtualBox has an RDP client that support USB redirection that works... sometimes. It recognizes my MSP430 programmers about half the time. I haven't gotten it to work with any iPod yet. The USB mass storage device for the iPod doesn't seem to work for some reason.
Enter VMWare. It's the alternative and using the VMWare remote console works great. USB devices work and everything is good -- except the VMWare remote console doesn't support sound on the remote system. For that, you have to use RDP and are back to the USB issue.
I'm digging in the the USB issues with the VirtualBox rdp client and hoping I can solve it. Still, why is it that everything has to be missing one important feature? Bleh.
--SS