Virtual PC 2007 - First thoughts

The post I made yesterday about Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 attracted a fair bit of attention so I thought I'd follow up with some initial thoughts on the new release.

Check out the gallery of Virtual PC 2007 screenshots here.

Disclosure - I use VMware extensively and until Microsoft made Virtual PC available for free a few months back I'd not used it all that much.  However, over the past few months I've grown quite used to it, especially as Virtual PC 2007 betas have worked on Vista.  However, I still do most of my virtual PC work through VMware Workstation and ACE.

Overall, I'm impressed with this release of Virtual PC.  Installation was quick and it's easy to get started with the program.  Also, the program has a smaller memory footprint than VMware seems to have, especially on Vista.  However, future releases of VMware might change that.

One of the advantages of Virtual PC 2007 over VMware Workstation (apart from price) is that Virtual PC is easier to get started with.  The interface is simpler and you don't get bombarded by too many questions and choices and a reasonable set of defaults are in place.  However, once you enter the settings page you have the ability to make all the changes you need.

One issue I found with Virtual PC was that it was tricky to boot up off a CD in order to install the OS - set it to use the physical drive and then reboot.

Beyond that, Virtual PC just works.  It's nice and fast and very responsive.  Once you install Virtual Machine Additions it gets simpler to use (for one thing you don't have to hit the right ALT key to release the mouse).

If you're familiar with, say, VMware or Parallels then you'll know what I'm talking about here.  If not, I encourage you to download Virtual PC 2007 and give it a spin. 

Now I'd like Microsoft to release some pre-activated virtual machines of different operating systems ...