Virtual PC goes free - but not for Mac OS X | TUAW

Good news everyone: Microsoft has released Virtual PC into the wild for free - but not for 'the rest of us'. That's right: an announcement on a MSDN blog (Microsoft Developer Network) has released Virtual PC 2004 as a free download for Windows users, and it offers details of VPC 2007 along the lines of support for Vista and improved performance over version 2004 (who on Earth thought it was a good idea to use years as a versioning system?). Of course, there isn't even an ETA that Microsoft can start delaying for version 2007, so we're guessing around 2010/2011 for the new version.

This move makes sense in light of Parallels making headlines virtually overnight (pun intended), sparking what seems like a renewed interest in the virtualization market.

[via Daring Fireball]

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Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

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Good news everyone: Microsoft has released Virtual PC into the wild for free - but not for 'the rest of us'. That's right: an announcement...

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Bjorn Nitmo

I too have been hoping that VMWare will announce their entry into the Mac market. Parallels is quite good considering that it's a new product but competition is good for everyone.

July 14 2006 at 2:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Ochs

Actually, this is in response to VMWare Server, which was also announced free the other day. That was known to be coming well before Parallels got its 15 minutes from the Mac-Intel crowd. No one in the PC world knows it exists.

VMWare is still the king of this market - can't wait to see them on OS X (and that is having alreay bought Parallels)!

July 14 2006 at 11:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dames

Considering 95,98 and ME are all unsuported by Microsoft and are all full of a bazillion more viruses and hijacks compared to XP. I consider that a risk.

July 14 2006 at 11:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jules Galagarza

I see the future. VPC 2007 will support Mac OS X virtualization. "Use Virtual PC 2007 to run operating systems such as MS-DOSÂ®, Windows, OS/2 and Mac OS XÂ®(10.5)..." ;-)

July 14 2006 at 11:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

lynol

Are there security vulnerabilities if I run '95, '98. ME etc. under VPC?

July 14 2006 at 10:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

AndyM

hmmmmm on the same day as:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/1942228&from=rss

July 14 2006 at 10:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Chris Meisenzahl

I saw that yesterday, too bad it's not also for OS X. ;-(

July 14 2006 at 10:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply