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Microsoft Virtual PC is Now Free.

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Here's the main Virtual PC 2004 web page:
MIcrosoft VPC 2004 Site

It's great to see this. VPC 2004 is a really wonderful program.
Click to expand...


microsoft mention that they are also offering a free download of Virtual PC 2007. Is it not out yet or do I have to search the microsoft site for it?
 
Google for VMWare Server.

Virtual PC is the #2 product in this space. Now there's a free version of #1.
 
Well, if you do MS servers, you need access to their VPC product, because MS publishes many of its demo packages as Virtual PC .vhd files.

I doubt that virtualization software sales were big bucks to Microsoft. But Virtual PC serves as a major training tool for people learning and using MS's Servers. It's a strategic tool from a demonstration point of view, rather than as a money-making tool. So it probably makes sense to make it more easily accessible by giving it away.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Here's the main Virtual PC 2004 web page:
MIcrosoft VPC 2004 Site

It's great to see this. VPC 2004 is a really wonderful program.
Click to expand...



How does VPC 2004 compare to Microsoft's other free product, Virtual Server 2005 R2??

Is Virtual Server 2005 just more advanced? I believe it supports clustering and requires IIS to be installed on the host. I assume then, you could access your virtual machines remotely just by accessing your host web server, if you have it available to access??

 
Originally posted by: spike spiegal
It's free because VMare's product is.

FYI - the VMware product is better.
Click to expand...
I do not take my kids to school with Ugly heavy Bulldozer that uses services and impact the system even when you do not use it; my Good nice SUV does it very well.

sonoma1993

VPC 2007 is Not yet available, Microsoft committed to give it free when it would come out.

:sun:
 
Well with VMWare you would need the server software to actually create an image. And I would want to run that on a standalone computer, not piggybacking on my daily driver.

In that sense VirtualPC is better because you can do the works and not need the server version.
 
Originally posted by: jlbenedict
How does VPC 2004 compare to Microsoft's other free product, Virtual Server 2005 R2??
Click to expand...
Well, I'm not aware of any real reason not to use Virtual Server in place of Virtual PC. I have to admit stupidity and laziness. I tried loading Virtual Server 2005 on my office PC and had problems getting it to run properly. Being lazy, I removed it and am sticking with Virtual PC for now. 😱

I need to put Virtual Server on another PC sometime soon and explore it fully. But Microsoft is still using Virtual PC for its technical demos, which is the kind of stuff that I mostly do with virtual devices. If I was looking at a PRODUCTION virtualized server, I'd use Virtual Server 2005 for sure.
 
Originally posted by: spike spiegal
It's free because VMare's product is.

FYI - the VMware product is better.
Click to expand...
I wouldnt say VMWare workstation is *that* much better than Virtual PC (it does have some extra features, but for testing/training purposes it doesnt offer much).

Where VMWare really shines is ESX/Infastructure and that is definetly not free.

Erik
 
Originally posted by: ms526
They're not offering the program free, that's the service pack for the program. not the program itself!
Click to expand...
No that's the full deal, just the way that it's labled makes it look like it's *only* a service pack.
 
Originally posted by: ms526
They're not offering the program free, that's the service pack for the program. not the program itself!
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I thought at first...but it's the full program.
 
All the benchmarks comparing VMware vs MS's product show VMware winning handily in terms of performance.

Microsoft could care less anyways since they make most of their money of *licenses* and not platform deployments. Money an IT dept doesn't spend on server/desktop hardware it doesn't need will likely be spent on, you guessed it, software. Hell, for that matter, pay people to use it if you get my drift.
 
this free copy of microsoft virtual pc 2004 rules. Right now i'm using it to install this copy of Windows Server 2003 enterprise edition that came with my 70-291 windows server 2003 book. I want to test that autopatcher update with virutal copy. Before I try it on my copy for school.
 
All the benchmarks comparing VMware vs MS's product show VMware winning handily in terms of performance.
Click to expand...
I've seen a lot of varying benchmarks and dont have a reason to believe either is a clear leader (comparing VPC versus VMWare Workstation); VM additions, Guest OS and Host OS all play a very big part in the differant results (reminds me of the "who is faster, NVidia or ATI" question, the answer is not so clear-cut).

The only clear performance advantage is when you're running ESX/Infrastructure because it's heavily optimized for faster storage, but that's outside of this discussion.

Personally I run VMWare because we are a VMWare shop (one of our products is enterprise virtualization); but I've run VPC plenty. They both do a good job and I think you'd do them a disservice by claiming one is clearly better than the other.
Microsoft could care less anyways since they make most of their money of *licenses* and not platform deployments. Money an IT dept doesn't spend on server/desktop hardware it doesn't need will likely be spent on, you guessed it, software. Hell, for that matter, pay people to use it if you get my drift.
Click to expand...
Of course, with server 2003 enterprise you can run 4 instances plus a host on a hardware platform regardless of what virtualization software you use so they *still* make their money.
 
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