This move is kind of gutsy, especially as a lot of Windows users see Vista as nothing more than a more restrictive and prettier looking XP. Few home users actually use a virtual environment to do any real work (or use a virtual environment to begin with) because of performance and resource issues. Instead they are more likely to be using a virtual environment to test drive Vista before bothering to install it over their current system. When they go to do this and are greeted with a "sorry, to protect you from yourself, please buy a $2000 enterprise copy of this software before installing it in your virtual environment" does it really give them that "cool, I have to install this on my system" feeling? Maybe the reason is that too many people were running Vista in Virtual Machines and discovering that it wasn't worth switching and Microsoft is gambling that the customers they loose by restricting virtual installs will be offset by the customers they don't loose by letting them see how pointless upgrading to Vista is?
You have to wonder how long it will be before Microsoft pushes down a patch to Windows XP and 2000 users preventing usage in Virtual machines for non $2000+ or above licenses.
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You have to wonder how long it will be before Microsoft pushes down patches to Windows XP and 2000 home to prevent usage in a virtual environment.
This move is kind of gutsy, especially as a lot of Windows users see Vista as nothing more than a more restrictive and prettier looking XP. Few home users actually use a virtual environment to do any real work (or use a virtual environment to begin with) because of performance and resource issues. Instead they are more likely to be using a virtual environment to test drive Vista before bothering to install it over their current system. When they go to do this and are greeted with a "sorry, to protect you from yourself, please buy a $2000 enterprise copy of this software before installing it in your virtual environment" does it really give them that "cool, I have to install this on my system" feeling? Maybe the reason is that too many people were running Vista in Virtual Machines and discovering that it wasn't worth switching and Microsoft is gambling that the customers they loose by restricting virtual installs will be offset by the customers they don't loose by letting them see how pointless upgrading to Vista is? You have to wonder how long it will be before Microsoft pushes down a patch to Windows XP and 2000 users preventing usage in Virtual machines for non $2000+ or above licenses.