virtualbox.org

I'd like to run Windows XP Professional in a VM with CentOS 5 as the host (although the latter is negotiable). I need dual monitor support in the guest, working just the same way as if the guest was running on a real machine.
I also want good performance - I'm moving off a 2GHz Athlon 64/2GB memory real machine onto a VM hosted on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200/4GB memory.
Can VirtualBox do the trick?
I originally intended to use Xen, but I don't think it supports two screens on the guest.
My other option seems to be VmWare workstation - any unbiased performance comparisons about?

Virtualbox currently doesn't support a second monitor. You can let the VM see it, but it can't use it. What you can do, is use the modifyvm option to set extra data about the resolution that spans across both screens. There might be support for it in the next release, but I doubt it. Make a suggestion, if it isn't done so already.

I've just found that it's possible to get dual screens working by using VBoxSDL. In my case I'm using Ubuntu as host and Win2K as guest. My command line is

VBoxSDL -vm "Win2K" -fullscreen -hostkey 302 0 -fixedmode 2560 1024 24

That sets the host key to Scroll Lock BTW. Only drawback is that I can't find any way to switch back to the host without closing the VM. Still handy though. I also had to manually change the video mode in the guest to make it use the whole space but that's pretty easy.