Virtualization is handy for all those times you need a PC to do that one little thing your Mac doesn't have the ability to do yet. But if you're finding yourself in need of a virtual machine for daily work or play, you might want to install some system utilities to keep that part of your Mac's hard drive in tip-top shape. Here are a few applications to help you become that virtualization (or dual-boot) power user.
Free version with watermarks, or $37 registration fee
Take screenshots easily with just a push of a button.
Fraps can benchmark your games and take screen captures of you and your Call of Duty team in multiplayer action. Or, you can use it to nab photos of your favorite televisions shows and find out if you’re really getting that perfect frames-per-second rate with that new first-person shooter.
Free
All those colors indicate the types of files I have clogging my virtual machine.
WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Windows. It displays a concise color coded map of the kind of data and file types you have stored on your hard drive for easy spring cleaning, helping you keep a watchful eye so that your virtual machine runs smoothly. Best of all, while it’s loading your system data there are tiny Pac Man sprites jumbling back and forth.
Free
It looks like a jumble, but it’s really all that’s running in Windows at any given time.
Process Explorer is about five times as powerful at managing your system's tasks than Windows' own built-in Task Manager. Not only does it show you all running applications, but it gets down to the root of which particular files and directories are constantly running in the background.
Free (Built-in to Windows)
Finally, something simple and easy to do in Microsoft Windows.
Actually, this isn't an application, but rather a handy way to configure your system. To access it in Windows 7, type "msconfig" into the search box under the Start menu. The System Configuration dialog box will then pop up and you'll be able to customize what programs and applications launch at start up. Use this feature to ensure that your virtual machine runs smoothly and to get rid of all that bloatware that Windows is so notoriously known for.
