Virtualization Disallowed For Vista Home

Maxx writes to mention a ZDNet article about Microsoft's dictum on Vista as a virtual machine. The software giant has declared that home versions of their upcoming OS may not be run virtually, because 'virtualization is not mature enough for broad adoption.' From the article: "'Microsoft says that consumers don't understand the risks of running virtual machines, and they only want enterprises that understand the risks to run Vista on a VM. So, Microsoft removes user choice in the name of security,' says Gartner analyst Michael Silver. 'The other option is to pay Microsoft US$300 for Windows Vista Business or US$399 for Windows Ultimate, instead of US$200 for Home Basic or US$239 for Home Premium,' Silver suggested."

Comments

Re:B.S. (NOT!!!)

[cdn-programmer]

I would be one who would want to virtualize the home version. Anyone doing development may need to do this. There are many legitimate reason - ease of debugging is one. Ease of determining how someone 0wn3d a machine is another.

Re:B.S.

[teslar]

this is clearly a bid to force us into the more expensive version

You know, I agree with the give-users-a-choice and all those arguments, but how many of your average computer users will know what virtualisation is, let alone need it? This is the kind of topic the slashdot crowd will be infuriated about while the rest of the world goes "meh. don't care", assuming they even notice this.

Re:Home User, Not the Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? They are not testing that the product works in a virtualized environment. They are testing that it works on Vista Home. The software is deployed from the development machine onto the virtual machine that is in a 'clean' state. Testing is done, and then the virtual machine can be reset back to a clean state a lot quicker than re-imaging the hard drive of a physical machine. The final verion(s) will be tested on a physical machine after they are happy with the results on the virtual machine.
    This is obviously not how you develop fast action games, but it has been a real boon for testing other types of applications.

There are more restrictions

[lpiob]

Not only virtualisation is restricted:

• you can move license to another computer only once (even in BOX version). So you'll hava to buy new Vista after second mainboard upgrade
• there is a limit of 10 computers that can see each other and communicate using Microsoft Windows Neighborhood, even in Vista Pro or Ultimate version.
• license prohibits making screenshots containing desktop or icons or other artwork incorporated into Vista
• only Vista Ultimate can be copied on to hard disk

Re:B.S.

[MsGeek]

No, this is directed at people running Parallels on Mac OS X. It's unmistakeable. They want to kill Parallels. They also want to kill whatever virtualization solution is being built by Apple for a future Mac OS X.

Microsoft is feeling the heat from one of their oldest enemies. Leopard is a Vista-killer, and now that a large slice of the Macintosh population is MacIntel they are fearful that MacIntel will poach more customers from their base.

And real companies who build software for windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

will have MSDN subscriptions, and the OSes you get through MSDN do not have this license restriction. It's a non-issue for software development houses.

Re:B.S. (NOT!!!)

[Dion]

Happily you don't need a lawyer as the only limitation on what you can do with Vista is Copyright law.

EULAs are 100% worthless and unenforcable.

Well at least in Denmark and I suspect much of the EU.

You see we have a set of restrictions on confusing marketing, you can't sell something and then later try to impose extra limitations on the buyer.

If MS wants to make the EULA assholery binding then they will have to present the terms BEFORE the sale takes place otherwise we are free to ignore it completely.

The same is true for language, if the EULA is written in english then it's 100% non-binding.