VirtualBox

[American Psycho]

Does anyone use VirtualBox and virtual machines for managing different accounts? It could be quite a good method.

How does this program handle on a Mac?

[Modee]

VirtualBox is an open source virtual machine emulator for Windows, OSX and Linux machines. It should work for what we are trying to do here, with the caveat of course that it will not change the IP address. I would say that this is overkill for eBay but may be useful for Amazon, where browser fingerprint may be used to track you. The techniques in the Short List will suffice for eBay/PayPal.

[American Psycho]

After some testing I've found VirtualBox and similar others use a huge amount of memory (which is not good for Mac users). You could I suppose use an external drive but realistically the traditional approach of separate user accounts is a perfectly sufficient approach to managing cookies.

[American Psycho]

I've moved over to using Parallels now. By comparison the user experience in VirtualBox is just miserable. I know VirtualBox has some nice enterprise features like encrypting VMs and it's open source and free, but you definitely get a lot more with Parallels.

Sometimes I do need Windows for some tasks, I've used Boot Camp in the past but I don't like having to shut down and move between OS's one at a time. Parallels lets you pretty much seamlessly run OS's side by side

[Modee]

I quit Parallels whenever I start up my Mac - turn it on only when I need it. Otherwise it just drains CPU power needlessly.

However, none of these virtuals works as well as the real thing, which is why I keep a PC laptop in reserve.

[American Psycho]

Yes you're right any VM software or remote access tool will use up quite a bit of processor power.

I'm curious though, what do you 'need' to do on a PC where a VM won't suffice?

[Modee]

Well just by way of example, currently the only working untethered version of jailbreak runs only off Windows, not OSX. And until recently, the only updater for my Escort 360 MAX radar detector was for Windows only too. Windows software that requires physical connection of a device is best run off an actual PC, as the emulators get a little tricky for those purposes, especially when two cables (for example, one micro USB, one mini USB) must be simultaneously plugged into the device to do the update.