Virtual PC now free.....and Virtual Server...get them now

I don't often talk about Virtual PC in this blog (well, never actually) but I thought it worth drawing people's attention to this announcement: Virtual PC 2004 is now free to all customers. Get it here: www.microsoft.com/virtualpc

If you haven't come across Virtual PC before, now might be a good time to learn more about it. In a nutshell, Virtual PC lets you create what are essentially "software PCs" on your Windows desktop - each of which emulates a complete physical computer. So you could create a virtual machine on your XP desktop and install OS/2 on it for example, then flick between OS/2 and XP. Or Windows 98, or DOS.

It doesn't take a huge leap to see why this is useful but here are a few ideas of why you might use it: Supporting multiple operating systems, technical support, legacy application support, training, or just for consolidating physical computers.

So much for Virtual PC 2004, but what about Virtual PC 2007 that has Vista support? Yes, that will be free too, and available within 90 days of Windows Vista. It replaces Virtual PC Express.

And a while ago we announced that Virtual Server 2005 is free, get that here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/

Can't be bad.