Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 released as freeware

[drussell]

The following is quoted from the Virtual PC Guy weblog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/Virtual_PC_Guy/

<<

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:15 AM

Virtual PC is free!

Today we announced a couple of cool things:

Virtual PC 2004 SP1 will be available free - now!

Virtual PC 2007 will be available for free in 2007, with support for
Microsoft Windows Vista

Windows Vista Enterprise customers will have the right to install four
copies of the operating system on a desktop for a single user

A couple of questions I can see people having are:

Why are you giving Virtual PC away for free?

Microsoft views virtualization as a tool. Virtual PC is used for a
number of reasons, but the primary reasons are for development and test
scenarios and application compatibility. We already provide Virtual PC
as part of MSDN for development and test users, and given that all our
other application compatibility tools are free - charging for Virtual
PC did not make much sense.

Is the Windows Vista Enterprise licensing right restricted to Virtual
PC?

No - you can use any virtualization software for this. In fact - you
do not even have to use virtualization software to exercise this right.
You could - if you wanted - setup a quad-boot physical computer and be
licensed for all four instances.

Well - enough talk - go check out the details and download Virtual PC
from

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc


Earlier this year Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition was also
released for free, but unlike Virtual PC 2004, it requires registration
with a Microsoft Passport account. VPC 2004 requires no
validation/information/registration--just click the download link.

Virtual PC 2004 requires a Windows 2000 Pro, Windows XP or later
operating system.

-Donnie

 

[Lee Peedin]

On 12 Jul 2006 11:22:01 -0700, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is - make special note
of this statement:

The following is quoted from the Virtual PC Guy weblog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/Virtual_PC_Guy/


Windows Vista Enterprise customers will have the right to install four
copies of the operating system on a desktop for a single user

So it appears that multiple copies will only be available for Vista
and only for Enterprise customers - wonder if anyone here qualifies?

Lee

 

[Craig]

On 12 Jul 2006 11:22:01 -0700, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is - make special note
of this statement:




So it appears that multiple copies will only be available for Vista
and only for Enterprise customers - wonder if anyone here qualifies?

Lee

Well, not exactly. There's a couple of Virtual PC versions, both of
which are free. The one that is available for Vista is v2007. Version
2004 (SP1) will run on any NT-based platform and is free.

Interesting thing is, it'll run "virtually" anything /except/ unix or
linux...

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

hth,
-Craig

 

[drussell]

Interesting thing is, it'll run "virtually" anything /except/ unix or
linux...

Here is a good list of operating systems that have been tested with VPC
2004. Quite a few free and open source OSs do seem to actually work:

http://vpc.visualwin.com/

It is true that there are no Virtual PC additions for Linux guest
operating systems. A workaround is that you can use Windows Services
for UNIX or SAMBA to cross mount NFS/SMB drives between the Guest and
Host operating systems. You can also time syncronize a Guest Linux OS
with the Host by setting up the Host as an NTP server.

-Donnie

 

[Fran]

I just installed it and it works, but how do I access host files inside
virtual PC? The free version doesnßt have VM additions, so Shared Folders
are unavailable.

 

[Bill Bradshaw]

I just installed it and it works, but how do I access host files
inside virtual PC? The free version doesnßt have VM additions, so
Shared Folders are unavailable.

Install the OS you are going to run and start it. Under the menu bar
"Action" button you will have the option to install or upgrade the
additions. They are there.

 

[Lee Peedin]

Well, not exactly. There's a couple of Virtual PC versions, both of
which are free. The one that is available for Vista is v2007. Version
2004 (SP1) will run on any NT-based platform and is free.

Interesting thing is, it'll run "virtually" anything /except/ unix or
linux...

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

hth,
-Craig

Yes Virtual PC is free, but what I was referring to was that only
Vista Enterprise customers will be allowed to run 4 copies of a single
Vista purchase under the Virtual PC. In other words, one would not be
able to load 4 copies of WinXP (same license) as virtual machines, nor
wil non-enterprise customers be able to load multiple copies of the
same Vista.

I'm hoping everyone here realizes that VMWare is free now and will run
Linux and/or Windows. On my laptop I have WinXP as the host system
with 3 virtual machines (SUSE 10, Win98SE, & Win2K). In WinXP I have
a shared folder that contains some of the same customer data files
that reside on our Novell server. When I'm away from the office and
don't want to bother with VPN/VNC, I simply map the shared folder
within one of the virtual machines as the same drive letter as what it
would be if I was connected to the server. That way I can develop &
fully test my programs without having to remember to make "last
minute" changes to the code to change drive mappings.

Lee

 

[Fran]

Thanks, that's what I needed.

Install the OS you are going to run and start it. Under the menu bar
"Action" button you will have the option to install or upgrade the
additions. They are there.
--
<Bill>

Brought to you from beautiful Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
N 53° 51.140' W 166° 30.228' (WGS 84)

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> Lee Peedin

I'm hoping everyone here realizes that VMWare is free now and will run
Linux and/or Windows.

Any specific reason to use VMWare vs VPC/VS?

 

[Lee Peedin]

In message <[email protected]> Lee Peedin


Any specific reason to use VMWare vs VPC/VS?

Well "my" specific reason is that I got in on testing the Beta
versions of VMWare and it was free (as in beer). As of July 12th it
is now out of beta and is still free. All you have to do is register
it to get a serial number. I registered my beta versions and I must
say that the only "new" emails this generated was announcements from
VMWare when a new beta was available (no increase in spam!)

After upgrading all our desktop systems from Win2k to WinXP, we had a
lot of unused Win2K license. Since the applications we develop are
not dependant on WinXP vs. Win2K we used these license to install
virtual machines for "off-line" testing.

Since I've never used VPC I can't attest to any real pros/cons for use
in our environment, but I do know that once you have a virtual machine
created in VMWare, it's simply a matter of copying a few files over to
another system and you instantly have the vm on another system.

Here is a link to the VMWare Server 1.0 that came out of beta and was
released on 7/12/2006

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

Lee

 

[Andy]

VPC 2004 does run Linux. I have Redhat 8 installed on it as we speak.

Andy

 

[jcaverly]

Interesting thing is, it'll run "virtually" anything /except/ unix or
linux...

Hi,
Virtual PC runs Damn Small Linux, available from
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

You don't even have to install this. First, download the .ISO file.

Next, create a new virtual machine, and start it.

Then, under the CD menu, select Capture ISO Image.

DSL comes pre-configured, so you have instant access to everything,
including the Web, using FireFox.

For more info,
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/11/08/490733.aspx

Joe

 

[Craig]

In message <[email protected]> Lee Peedin


Any specific reason to use VMWare vs VPC/VS?

I don't use either but...

After reading some of the marketing material on VPC, it appears that
although it can host linux & unix systems, this function isn't
/supported/ by Microsoft.

Someone had posted a follow up to the OP showing a pretty active user
community that has shown VPC will support other OS' but, if official
support is an issue for you, that would be something to consider.

-Craig

 

[Terry]

In message <[email protected]> Lee Peedin


Any specific reason to use VMWare vs VPC/VS?

I haven't used either one (yet), but one difference I noted was VMWare
is a 145 MB download, where VPC is 19.

Terry

 

[Klaatu]

I haven't used either one (yet), but one difference I noted was VMWare
is a 145 MB download, where VPC is 19.

It also sounds like VMWare is more for servers. I've used MS VPC
extensively on regular old Windows 2000 and XP just fine.

 

[John Fitzsimons]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:27:13 GMT, Lee Peedin

I'm hoping everyone here realizes that VMWare is free now

< snip >

No, we didn't all realise that. Thank you for that information.

Regards, John.

 

[Fran]

I have tried both, and VPC is much more user friendly than VMware, and
supports directory sharing pretty well, as oposed to VMware which can access
host files only if you set up a virtul network. Plus VPC is a bit faster for
me (virtual win98 on winxp).

 

[Lee Peedin]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:27:13 GMT, Lee Peedin



< snip >

No, we didn't all realise that. Thank you for that information.

Regards, John.

Amazingly enough, Microsoft announced their "free" release the day
"after" VMWare announced that there server was out of beta and was
free. Based on some other's comments it seems that VPC might be a bit
easier to set up, but remember, it will only work when the host OS is
a Windows product. VMWare has a free server for both Linux & Windows
(and maybe others).

In a similiar thread in one of the Microsoft NGs one MVP has made the
comment that the folder sharing with VPC is somewhat "flacky". I can
not attest to that since I've never used it, BUT I can say that by
setting up a virtual network with VMWare and using shared folders is
"very" stable. I recently ran a test between a Win2K vm
reading/writing data to a shared folder on the WinXP host system. In
the 4 minute-40 second run of the application over 25,000 BTrieve
database hits were made - not a single failure.

I'm sure both produce have their pros/cons, but for our shop we'll
stick with VMWare since we have a need for both Windows & Linux vm
servers.

Lee

 

[Aaron]

In message <[email protected]> Lee Peedin


Any specific reason to use VMWare vs VPC/VS?

I'm not too impressed by Virtual PC's snapshot management compared to
VMware workstation. I presume Vmware server is similar.

 

[Terry]

After upgrading all our desktop systems from Win2k to WinXP, we had a
lot of unused Win2K license. Since the applications we develop are
not dependant on WinXP vs. Win2K we used these license to install
virtual machines for "off-line" testing.

I've been reading the vmware site, but I'm still confused about what
the different products are. Can you explain the difference between
VMWare Server and VMWare workstation?

I'm interested in testing applications I write under different windows
operating systems. Can I use either of these products? What advantage
does the $189 Workstation product offer?

Thanks,

Terry