Whether you are a professional software tester or you simply like to evaluate a large array of apps before choosing the one that best suits your necessities, you probably know that a virtualized environment can save you a lot of trouble: you can install any app without worrying it might mess up your previous settings and you can get rid of it just as easily. And if you want to test the same app on several operating systems, Oracle VM VirtualBox can be quite helpful.
The application comes with an intuitive interface that allows users to add a new virtual machine and choose the OS they prefer (be it Solaris, Windows, Linux, BSD or Mac OS X), as well as the exact version. The next steps include assigning the new virtual machine the amount of RAM and HDD space it will take, as well as the type of storage, dynamic or fixed, it is to occupy on the PC.
In order to launch any virtualized OS, you simply need to press the Start button - once it is running, you can pause, reset or close your virtual machine, or even clone it or create a dedicated desktop shortcut to help you open it whenever you need it.
If you are an expert user, you can also benefit from specialized functions of Oracle VM VirtualBox, such as shared folders, seamless windows, 3D virtualization, multigeneration branched snapshots, remote machine display and modularity.
Oracle VM VirtualBox also features versatile hardware support, so that you can create virtual machines that have up multiple virtual CPUs (regardless of how many cores you have physically on your PC), that recognize USB devices or ones that come with multiscreen resolutions, integrated iSCSI support and PXE network boot.
To wrap it up, it is safe to say that Oracle VM VirtualBox can come in handy to both novices and experts: while the former can get their virtual machines up and running in no time, the latter can customize their virtualized environment to the tiniest details.

What's New in This Release:
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:
· VMM: don’t inject stale VT-x events to prevent crashes after VM reset (bug #11256)
· VMM: workaround for buggy BIOSes which enable MONITOR only for certain CPUs (bug #9460)
· GUI: fixed trimming of anti-aliased text in details-view element headers (4.2.0 regression)
· GUI: fixed create-settings-file-alias functionality on Mac hosts (4.2.0 regression)
· GUI: fixed take-guest-screenshot functionality on Windows hosts (bug #11095)
· GUI: several minor fixes, including palette fixes (bug #11191)
· GUI: fixed Windows 2012 OS type (bug #11206)
· GUI: allow to terminate the VM even if VBoxSVC crashed
· API: fixed cancelling of snapshots, previously this could lead to inconsistent VM configs (bug #6877)
· API: fixed identifying disk images by UUID (bug #11209)
· 3D Support: several fixes
· VRDP: fixed occasional crash with external authentication (bug #11156)
· VGA: fix for double scan text modes
· USB: fixed invalid pending request count at ...