Filed under: OS, Retail, Software
Virtual PC goes free - but not for Mac OS X
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chris Meisenzahl said 10:50AM on 7-14-2006
I saw that yesterday, too bad it's not also for OS X. ;-(
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Andy said 10:53AM on 7-14-2006
hmmmmm on the same day as:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/12/1942228&from=rss
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lynol said 10:56AM on 7-14-2006
Are there security vulnerabilities if I run '95, '98. ME etc. under VPC?
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Jules Galagarza said 11:22AM on 7-14-2006
I see the future. VPC 2007 will support Mac OS X virtualization. "Use Virtual PC 2007 to run operating systems such as MS-DOS®, Windows, OS/2 and Mac OS X®(10.5)..." ;-)
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Dames said 11:29AM on 7-14-2006
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.
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Joshua Ochs said 11:50AM on 7-14-2006
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)!
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Bjorn Nitmo said 2:14PM on 7-14-2006
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.
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