Virtual PC, FolderShare, and Sysinternals

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I'm risking it again...three completely different topics in a single post! For those with a weak heart, please turn away now. Otherwise...

If you haven't heard yet, Virtual PC is now free, and you can download the 2004 edition now. If you haven't played with virtualization technology, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. It's a great way to test drive software without having it impact your primary machine. It's also an easy way to duplicate bugs on various operating systems without having to reboot to another partition. It's very useful for demos too, especially since you can configure an image to easily undo any changes that were made to the "virtual PC" when you shut it down...this includes formatting the virtual C: drive...a great demo, by the way. I told you that this post wasn't for the faint of heart!

We've also launched the beta version of a new Windows Live Service called FolderShare. If you want to easily synchronize your files across a number of different computers all via the internet, this is for you. This even works if you want to share files with a friend or colleague. The synchronization happens automagically in the background, so there's not much to do after you've setup your free account. I love these "restrictions:"

  • Share files up to 2 GB in size
  • Unlimited file transfers - no limits on quantity or size of files transferred
  • Any file type - files are synced and transferred in their original format

Doesn't sound too restrictive to me. :-)

Last, we went and purchased Winternals. This means that Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell are now part of the team! Welcome to Microsoft, guys! And if you've never downloaded or used one of their free Sysinternals tools, well, you just better go and try some of them. Some of my favorites are Regmon, Filemon, and Process Explorer. They're small tools with quick downloads that do their job very well.