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Just an example for the real need: We have a good old 10+ years old infrared spectrometer shipped with an original Dell computer that runs Win95 ver.2 (the one that shows "with Internet Explorer" on the boot screen). The compuer begins to die, but we cannot change it to a less old one: the spectrometer control software does not start even on win98. Not speaking of the control card: you simply won't find the appropriate slot it needs on a less antique motherboard. The manufacturer's policy is clear: if you lose your button, buy a new coat.
Albert
Btw we were not even able to change the CD and floppy drives 'cause they operate with proprietary Dell drivers
Ouch! A perfect bad example of the negative aspects of vendor lock-in. In this case though, running in VMWare or VBox is irrelevant since the spectrometer has special interface hardware. Anyway, point being that in almost, but not quite all, cases, VirtualBox will serve as a host for legacy Windows installs/apps. In those incredibly rare cases when you are stuck in vendor lock-in you really are stuck, and you either run a dedicated machine, or you take extra steps to run specific kernels and specific versions of a VM hypervisor... C -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org