Virtual PC 2004

Don't know how this news managed to pass me by but I was reading in my favourite PC mag (PC Plus) that Microsoft have released Virtual PC 2004 for free! (and they intend to do the same for the 2007 version once Vista is released). That's very nice of them.

I've always resisted the urge to install a dual boot configuration for a Linux distro or some such due to the hassle, geekiness, danger of wrecking a perfectly good Windows install etc. I dabbled with a few "Live" Linux flavours (Kubuntu, Knoppix etc.) where you can run directly from CD/DVD without having to install anything. These are fine for testing purposes and hardware compatibility issues but, for obvious reasons, can be incredibly slow to operate.

Ten minutes after reading the news I'd downloaded it and was in the process of installing Ubuntu as a virtual machine on my PC. The total install took about 1.5 hours and once up and running Ubuntu spent a further 2 hours downloading and installing updates.

Very easy to get up and running, all I had to do was drag an .iso image of an Ubuntu Live distro (included on PC Plus' DVD) onto the CD icon of Virtual PC 2004 and off it went, didn't even need to burn the image to disc (just as well as I'm currently out of blank CDs or DVDs). I configured it to use 256Mb of system memory (I have 2Gb of RAM) and it grabbed 11Gb of HD space. No messing with partioning or anything dangerous, it handles all the difficult stuff on the fly.

So, I can now run Ubuntu in a window on my XP Pro's desktop without any worry about the health of my machine. No boot loader menus, re-booting in and out etc I can work in both Operating Systems simultaneously, it's really quite fantastic.

What I really want to do is use a spare Windows XP licence from work and install a second copy on my PC as a virtual machine. Once up and running I could use it for testing all those little applications I download and try for a few minutes before abandoning. The odd one or two will make it though. Once approved for serious use I can then install them on the "real" PC. When the "virtual" PC eventually becomes clogged with all the crap I can just delete it and reinstall as a new Virtual PC. Smart eh? Yes, I know this extremely geeky but there you go.

To get the best out of Virtual machines you really need masses of RAM, fast processors (Dual/Quad cores woof!) and dual screens would be nice (I'm actually running a triple screen set up but more on that in a later post ;-)

Word of warning: Although it is possible to install Vista Beta as a Virtual PC on your Windows XP machine it's not advisable as it'll take hours and hours to install and then run dog slow. There's info on this on the links from Microsoft's product page. But for Dos, Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Linux etc. this really is the dogs.

Category:

• Computer
• Windows
• Linux
• Ubuntu
• Virtual+PC