Microsoft's Virtual PC product, both the currently shipping Virtual PC 2004, and the forthcoming Virtual PC 2007 and later versions, are now, and will be free!
This is a huge, huge announcement.
When the announcement was made on April 3, about the freedom of Virtual Server, I wondered why Virtual PC was not included. At the time, it seemed that Microsoft was still playing defense, trying to emulate EMC's freeing of their VMWare Server product.
Now they seem to be going forward with a lot more verve, and risking failure, a position which seemed to have altogether vanished from Microsoft over the past few years, when risk-aversion seemed to have come to the fore, both in products, and strategy.
Thanks, Microsoft.
About time, as well!
We really need you to be a more daring in moving computing forward. The rise of GOOG and all the other (current) media 'Ho's' darlings is entirely due to you having seeded the innovative ensign to them, our ostrich-like fight for you notwithstanding.
Kudos to your Windows Live team for not laying down the innovation colors.
In briefings with members of that team courtesy of The Hive at both privately at CES 2006 and at the Vista Beta Labs, what I can tell you (definitely not under NDA) is that those guys and gals are brimming with extremely brilliant and useful ideas. An indication of this is the amount of Windows Live products that have gone gold in the past few.
Heaven help their competitors when those ideas go gold.
Really.
Download link for Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is here.
Copyright © 2006, John Obeto II for SmallBizVista.com®