Microsoft Issues Free Virtual PC 2007
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 20th Feb 2007 21:15 UTC, submitted by Moochman
Microsoft The long-awaited update to Microsoft's virtualization software was released Monday. Virtual PC 2007 brings support for Windows Vista - as both a guest and host operating system - and takes advantage of new hardware virtualization technology from both Intel and AMD. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Virtual PC 2007 are available free of charge; Microsoft made Virtual PC 2004 SP1 freeware last July and promised to release 2007 for no cost. The move to freeware ups the ante with rival virtualization companies such as VMware and new market entrant Parallels.
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no os x support?
by broken_symlink on Tue 20th Feb 2007 22:18 UTC
broken_symlink
Member since:
2005-07-06

are there no more emulators for old mac owners? i'd still like something on my g5 it doesn't matter if it doesn't do x86. even g4 or g5 emulation is fine so i can run linux. but i'd like some speed. qemu is too slow.

Reply Score: 1

MS Windows version only...
by ed1986 on Tue 20th Feb 2007 22:19 UTC
ed1986
Member since:
2006-10-03

The Mac (Power PC) version is still not free...

Reply Score: 1

Performance
by sb56637 on Tue 20th Feb 2007 22:50 UTC
sb56637
Member since:
2006-05-11

Any comments on Virtual PC 2007's performance compared to VMware, at least subjective opinions? How about compared to VirtualBox? I get what feels like almost native performance with VMware Linux machines running on my Win XP host. I never tried Virtual PC because I read it was much slower. But the downside is that VMware is a huge download and it's very invasive on the host system. Virtual PC somehow seems lighter-weight to me.

Reply Score: 1

RE: Performance
by edogawaconan on Tue 20th Feb 2007 23:17 UTC in reply to "Performance"
edogawaconan Member since:
2006-10-10

it feels faster than vpc 2004sp1 (with openbsd as guest os)on a pentium3 733mhz box. I don't know how it compare with vmware though (because it's not free)

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: Performance
by Lamego on Wed 21st Feb 2007 00:11 UTC in reply to "RE: Performance"
Lamego Member since:
2006-01-12

VMWare Server is free
VMWare Workstation 6 Beta is also free

Reply Score: 1

RE[3]: Performance
by kamil_chatrnuch on Wed 21st Feb 2007 08:16 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Performance"
kamil_chatrnuch Member since:
2005-07-07

"VMWare Workstation 6 Beta is also free"

is it time limited, or can i keep running it after the v6 is out?

Edited 2007-02-21 08:16

Reply Score: 2

RE[4]: Performance
by gilboa on Wed 21st Feb 2007 11:28 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Performance"
gilboa Member since:
2005-07-06

AFAIK, No.

- Gilboa

Reply Score: 2

RE[3]: Performance
by Robert Escue on Wed 21st Feb 2007 16:34 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Performance"
Robert Escue Member since:
2005-07-08

Yes VMware Workstation 6 Beta is free, but it also runs in Debug Mode, which pretty well saps it dry performance wise.

Reply Score: 2

RE[2]: Performance
by sb56637 on Wed 21st Feb 2007 02:49 UTC in reply to "RE: Performance"
sb56637 Member since:
2006-05-11

Cool, thanks!

Reply Score: 1

RE: Performance
by como on Wed 21st Feb 2007 05:44 UTC in reply to "Performance"
como Member since:
2006-11-20

It's not slower. VPC2004 was on par with VMWare5. Now VPC uses hardware-assisted virtualization which improves the performance.

Reply Score: 1

RE: Performance
by popper on Wed 21st Feb 2007 10:15 UTC in reply to "Performance"
popper Member since:
2006-02-24

the thing that gets me though these things arnt "virtualization" their Emulation.

as just one example, if they were real 'virtualization' then your virtual USB port would be working at the real speed, or hell , it would actually see a USB2 port as that (not slow usb1.1),and use that at almost the true speed and you would be able to use for instance your USB2 DVB-T stick, these Emulators can NOT do even that so are very limited for anything (and thats a lot of things)
USB related.

Reply Score: 1

U-S-B!
by wgan on Tue 20th Feb 2007 22:56 UTC
wgan
Member since:
2006-08-28

USB? then why gave it a '2007'?

Reply Score: 1

screen capture?
by lqsh on Tue 20th Feb 2007 23:39 UTC
lqsh
Member since:
2007-01-01

still can't do a screen capture in 2007 ;)

Reply Score: 1

RE: Performance
by topos on Wed 21st Feb 2007 02:38 UTC
topos
Member since:
2005-07-28

I installed it last night on Windows Vista Host with Windows XP guest. It feels slower then VMware 5.5.3 with Windows XP host, Windows XP guest . My computer does not have a processor with "virtual technology" (old AMD dual core 4200) so Virtual PC cannot take advantage of it.
I was disapointed about the feature of that new release: I did not find much compare to Virtual PC 2004. I did not find any "snapshot" of virtual machine, a feature that I constantly use with VMware. As expected, no support for a Linux guest with Virtual PC!

Reply Score: 2

v So what?
by Arne J. on Wed 21st Feb 2007 04:57 UTC
Under Wine....
by dindin on Wed 21st Feb 2007 14:18 UTC
dindin
Member since:
2006-03-29

Can this program be run under wine? ;)

Reply Score: 1

Long Awaited?
by Excessive on Wed 21st Feb 2007 20:10 UTC
Excessive
Member since:
2006-10-19

Long awaited? By who? I'm happy with my VMWare.

Reply Score: 0

RE: Long Awaited?
by flanque on Thu 22nd Feb 2007 04:34 UTC in reply to "Long Awaited?"
flanque Member since:
2005-12-15

It makes sense given the huge recent interest in virtualisation that tens of thousands would be interested.

The fact that you're not interested doesn't equate to nobody else being interested either.

Reply Score: 2

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