Microsoft Giving Away Virtual PC 2007
In an effort to make the switch to Vista as painless as possible, Microsoft is giving away Virtual PC 2007 as a free download on their website. The idea is that users can install Vista and then use Virtual PC to setup a virtual environment with Windows XP installed. Then if there are any issues running their favorite apps under Vista, they can just fire up the virtualized copy of XP. I first read about this at Yahoo! News.
To be clear, I was a bit confused at first because my only experience with Virtual PC was in OS X, where you could run Windows on your Mac... before they had Intel processors. But, this one is all Windows, as it requires Vista Enterprise/Ultimate or XP Professional/Tablet PC to be the host OS.
I had been a die hard Windows guy for years until I finally switched about 4 months ago, and I still always have a copy of XP running in Parallels non-stop. But really, with this approach Microsoft sure isn't screaming that Vista is stable and compatible...
This reminds me - hop over to Brendan Dawes' site for a blog entry he wrote about his recent trip to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond:
"I have to admit I didn't know what to expect meeting people who worked at Microsoft - a company that many people love to hate. But without exception everyone was passionate about what they were doing there - with creativity and the love of good design seeming to be at the heart of everything they do. I didn't think I'd ever be using the words Microsoft and creativity in the same paragraph but I've been there and met some of the people who are trying to change the perception of Microsoft and it was very inspiring."
