Windows 7 & Virtual PC
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It…
There’s been a lot of noise this week around the broad availability of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) (available for download here), but the thing that caught my attention was the beta availability of a new version of Virtual PC, specifically designed for Windows 7.
Now, you have probably noticed the increased focus here at Microsoft on 64-bit computing, with the Exchange Server team no longer shipping a 32-bit version and many other server products likely to follow suit (yes SharePoint Server 2010, I’m looking at you). In the not-too-distant future I can see a time when I will need to run 64-bit virtual machines just to be able to deliver my standard demos.
Since Virtual PC 2007 doesn’t support 64-bit guests, I was hoping that the new Windows 7 version would add this much-requested feature. Alas, it would appear that my hopes have been cruelly dashed if the following TechNet forum thread is to be believed - VPC and 64-bit Guest Support. It looks as though my only 100% Microsoft option is to use Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-v as my notebook PC host OS. Alternatively, I could always purchase a copy of VMWare Workstation which supports both 32-bit and 64-bit guest OS, but as a loyal Microsoft employee (and mostly because I don’t want to spend my own money), I probably won’t….or then again…:-).
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