Virtual PC 2007 is available, and free!

Hey guys,

I'm a big fan of virtualization technology - as a small business owner it is invaluable because it enables me to switch from many different OS setups with a minimal number of machines.

I usually use Virtual Server R2 to do my virtualization, but one drawback to it is that it does not virtualize a sound card. It is also meant for server virtualization (as it's name would suggest) so its performance seems to be geared more towards headless performance than user interaction (though the user interaction is reasonable).

Virtual PC has always been better for user interaction, and a new version, Virtual PC 2007 has been released this month. See Ben Armstrong's blog for details. His blog is a great resource for all things virtual as well.

Like its sibling, Virtual Server R2, Virtual PC 2007 is free for download. You can grab yourself a copy from

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

From the little I've read about it so far, it looks like the big improvements to Virtual PC 2007 are:

- Support for Vista as both a guest and host

- Support for multi-monitor setups

- x64 support

I'm trying it now and will post more about my results with it.

Thanks!

Eric.