When comparing Rapid environment editor vs VirtualBox, the Slant community recommends VirtualBox for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for Windows?” VirtualBox is ranked 3rd while Rapid environment editor is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose VirtualBox is:
VirtualBox is available for free with source code available [here](https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk). A "VirtualBox Extension Pack" that includes virtual USB 2.0, VirtualBox RDP & PXE boot support is available only under a commercial license.
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Pros
Pro Warnings
Displays wrong entries in red, e.g. paths that do no longer exist.
Pro Easy
Editing of Windows environment variables is easy, splits long lines.
Pro Resolve variables values, make easy a refactoring of PATH by extracting different elements in their own new variable
Pro Convert variables between verbatim and expandable
Windows supports referencing variables within variables, but only if they're marked in the registry as expandable, and conversion between the two types is exposed in the context menu for each variable.
Pro Free and mostly open source
VirtualBox is available for free with source code available here. A "VirtualBox Extension Pack" that includes virtual USB 2.0, VirtualBox RDP & PXE boot support is available only under a commercial license.
Cons
Con Simple
Some may not consider it a "power" user tool.
Con Inferior performance
Apart from second-class performance in virtualization, there are some visual glitches with Windows 8.1 on Mavericks.
Con Confusing interface and lacking usability features
VirtualBox might be a bit confusing for beginners - it requires an understanding of a lot more technical details than other VMs.