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The Next Round in the Virtualization Wars

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the in-this-corner dept.

GvG writes "After making Virtual Server available for free some time ago, Microsoft announced today it is offering Virtual PC as a free (as in beer) download. They also announced a change to the Vista license related to virtualization: Customers who deploy Windows Vista Enterprise have the ability to install up to four (4) copies of the operating system in a virtual machine for a single user on a single device. Even better, nothing in the license requires that Microsoft Virtualization technologies be used - if you want to use a competing product as your Virtualization solution, you still get the four extra licenses for use with VMs."

3 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Sorry Mac Users by thedbp · · Score: 4, Informative

    the version of VPC that is freely available only runs on Windows.

    Blarg!

  2. What is supported by Nemith · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out this link as to what will work on VPC and what won't. http://vpc.visualwin.com/

  3. Re:I don't get why this is so special? by thedbp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Um, NO.

    WINE uses reverse engineered Windows APIs to run Windows apps w/out running a copy of Windows and isn't compatible with a metric shit-ton of software.

    Virtual PC runs a full copy of Windows in a sandboxed environment, great for servers to compartmentalize their various services or for Mac users to run a Windows-only app and is exactly like running Windows on an actual PC.

    Don't you people know how to use Google?