vmware workstation 12 out now - built for W10

Hi everyone!

It's my understanding that VM Player 7.x has been released with Workstation 11 and we know the latest release for Player 7 is the 7.1.3.
Recently I switched from a very old Workstation 7.x to Player 7.1.3 right to test how Windows 10 works and how legacy Windows 7 and XP guests would run, knowing that hardware requirements would be hit the general guests performance.
However with my surprise everything is fine even if I still have to upgrade the Tools in the 7/XP guests (that's another story).

Now if I plan to upgrade to Workstation 12, is it more hardware-demanding vs. Player 7.x in order to run Windows 7 and Windows 10 guests or the difference will be barely noticeable?

Edit: Player 7.1.3 not 7.1.4

Workstation 11 is not the same as the free with option to buy Workstation 12 Player. The way VM ware decided to make certain changes seems to be throwing everyone off a bit. Workstation 12 Player seems to be replacing the last VM Player(strictly non commercial) release that came out on June 15th. When first getting 10 on I found the 5.0 version I was previously running with wouldn't go on 10 at all and went for the latest at the time which actually shows 7.1.2 on the drive.

There wasn't any 1.4 option seen in August when 10 was first out and then in September this new option appeared still being a free for home use but now seeing the option to buy the Workstation Player Pro license. Besides that the entirely free version lacks any support while VM ware apparently has limited help available until buying the full license.

With the dual boot of 7 with 10 I run the Hyper-V option in 10 which actually sees more setting along with a few additional options in comparison until the Pro version of the player is unlocked for the commercial side of the software there. Enabling Hyper-V however does seem to cancel out any other VM program by default while the Workstation 12 Player has worked out well on 10 as well as it runs on the 64bit 7 side. In having that feature enabled however VM ware always seems to be the best alternative from the finding here over the last several years.

Well don't forget besides Workstation and Workstation Pro you now have Workstation Player and Workstation Player Pro. Previously you would have only seen Workstation and VM Player which is where people are getting lost. VM Player had always been the freebie for home use while download of the Workstation would be a trial period experience.

For 2016 however they wanted to feature better options for the version people would use at home so more would end buying the full license deal. This is a marketing move rather then simply keeping on providing the free for home only since people run home businesses as well.

Workstation wasn't renamed at all. For that you see the regular and Pro versions both paid for. The VM Player Pro was full version there for the VM Player. For this new one you now see the Workstation Player Pro edition which likely has more features as well as support for additional things. For the basic home use however the Workstation Player didn't end up being that much different then the VM Player release back in June except for the option to get the Pro license.

Here I have the Workstation 12 Player on the 64bit 7 Ultimate while 10 now only sees the Hyper-V enabled while still having the VM ware on. I also have Virtual Box on both versions while that simply sits there these days!

As for performance I had the last VM Player version on just before the Workstation 12 Player and couldn't tell the difference as far as one running slower then the other. What hammered Windows years ago however wasn't the older version of VM Player but having multiple VMs running with only 4gb of memory on the old Vista to 7 beta/RC/Retail case and running into the "out of resources" error from simply not having the memory capacity.

One of the VMs at the time was actually 98SE that couldn't go over 500mb! The XP Mode and XP Home VMs were both set for 2gb while a Linux distro was half at only 1gb for the 64bit flavor of that one. The Workstation Player seen at this time will also allow you to run multiple instances as long as you have that extra system memory installed keeping the Host at 2+gb and not cranking the memory up too much for any of the VMs.

This was the finding I had years back when having the XP Mode running on 7 at the same time I had three VM Player VMs running for XP Home, a Linux distro, and even 98SE the old Legacy version there. As long as your system has the adequate resources this should work with the Workstation Player as well. Hyper-V on the other hand only allows for one VM at a time there but does have more options available such as the ability to create new network filters for each VM. With Linux distros however you might have to use a pre-existing Windows or other filter since those do vary in great lengths depending on the distribution.