Fri 13 Oct 2006
Update: Review of Virtual PC 2007 RTM
You’ve probably heard already that the beta version of Virtual PC 2007 is available at Microsoft Connect. Today, I tested Microsoft’s latest virtualization tool. The good news: The test was quite fast. The bad news is… well, read my review…
At first, I tried installing Virtual PC 2007 on my Windows testing server. I was quite surprised when the setup program informed me that this host operating system is not supported. What? Can”t install Virtual PC on a Windows Server 2003? That’s unbelievable!
I, then, googled a little and found out that Virtual PC does support Windows Server 2003, but only its Standard Edition. My testing server runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. Since I am often working with multiple virtual machines at the same time, I need more than 4GB RAM.
I should have stopped my test at this point, because Virtual PC 2007 is useless for me, if not for my curiosity. So I installed it on my desktop running Windows XP. Afterwards I imported a virtual machine originally installed on Virtual Server 2005.
To my surprise, Virtual PC was complaining again: “The hardware standard (Virtual Server 2005) for virtual machine “test” is not recognized.” I was able to boot up this virtual machine anyway, and it seemed to work fine during my short test. Still I find this message a bit strange and unsettling. Okay, no more googling now. Test is over.
You still want to know about the new features of Virtual PC 2007? Well, it supports Vista as host and guest. That is the minimum I expected. Another new feature is the so called hardware-assisted virtualization. This means that the virtualization technology from Intel and AMD is now supported.
If you are a heavy software tester, then VMware Workstation still is by far the best choice. Linked cloning, snapshot management and virtual networks are must-have-features then. I hoped that Microsoft would catch-up with VMware Workstation 5.5, but you really can’t compare it with Virtual PC 2007.
Maybe, my review is a bit unfair. After all, Virtual PC doesn’t cost a cent. If you only test a tool every now then which you don’t want to install on your desktop, then Virtual PC 2007 is sufficient. VMware Server might be a better option, though. It is also free and a more professional tool. However, it can’t be installed on Windows XP/Vista. You need a server OS as host. See comments below!
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VMware Server installs fine on my XP and works also like a champ
That’s interesting because this datasheet (PDF) doesn’t mention Windows XP as host system. Thanks for the tip!
We use VMware Server 1.0.1 on Windows XP to let people play around with Vista. It does warn you that XP is not a supported host OS but it works absolutely fine. And its free, and really good. Someone tell me again why should I be using Virtual PC?
Very good question! I’d like to know the answer too.
I have downloaded the Virtual PC 2007 and I have WINXP as my OS, just curious about how this thing works and if its all that its cracked up to be. Do you have to purchase another retail copy of XP to install it on the Virtual PC? Or can I just use what I already own?
Julie, as far as I know, you need a license for every WinXP instance. So if your host system is XP, and you run 2 virtual machines with XP, you would need 3 XP licenses.