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Nick White at Microsoft’s Windows Vista Team Blog has the Virtual PC 2007 news:
Virtual PC 2007 Beta is now available as a free download from connect.microsoft.com. Virtual PC 2007 is optimized to work well for Windows Vista as both the host and guest OS. This version works with both 32-bit Vista and 64-bit Vista as the host operating system as well as Windows XP and has improved performance including support for hardware virtualization technologies from AMD and Intel. So now you have an easy way to try out Windows Vista, even if you are reluctant to replace the OS on one your existing PCs; or if you have already taken the plunge you can spin up a legacy operating system in a virtual machine on your Windows Vista machine.
More by following the link, at the Virtual PC home page, and at the blog of Microsoft’s Virtual PC Guy.
Last week’s Apple WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC) was light on news pertaining to Microsoft aside from the usual Apple snarking about Vista. There’s nothing more likely than that to excite geeky passions and while it’s not out of place at an event dedicated to rallying the developer troops, perhaps more relevant were the following:
Apple has completed the transition to Intel hardware with new Mac Pro desktop systems and new quad core Xeon Xserve servers. More important, they “are offered at price points well below the PowerPC-based systems they replace. ” Apple also cut prices on their Cinema displays. They’re still a flea bite on the Wintel market, but they’re trying.
Of course, the shipping hardware may have changed, but Apple still has the baggage of existing users on the old Power PC Macs and existing Power PC software as well. In that regard, Microsoft had a mix of news for Apple users. First, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit reported progress on converting their Power PC software to Universal binaries that will run on both hardware architectures:
“Tens of millions of lines of code have been 100 percent transitioned to Xcode on the road to a Universal version of Office for Mac. The Mac BU also will provide free, downloadable converters to allow users of current versions of Office for Mac to read the new Microsoft Office Open XML formats following the availability of Office for Windows,” wrote a Microsoft spokesperson.
Microsoft Messenger for Mac 6.0, a new version of Microsoft’s instant messaging application, is coming “later this year,” according to the company. It will include features such as federation with Yahoo! Messenger, customized emoticons and spell check. Users will also be able to display personal messages or what song’s playing in iTunes.
Microsoft is also developing a new version of its Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client software, which enables Mac users to access Windows PCs on their network. “The next version of RDC will be released as a fully supported free product and details on this release will be shared closer to launch,” stated Microsoft.
There’s still no timeframe for release of the new Office for Mac. Microsoft also completed the assessment they had promised in January and decided not to provide an Intel version of Virtual PC for the Mac:
What has been a foregone conclusion for many Mac users has finally been confirmed: Microsoft’s Virtual PC is dead. In a statement provided to BetaNews Monday, the company said its Macintosh Business Unit has decided not to go forward with a version of the software native to the Intel platform.
“Developing a high-quality virtualization solution, such as Virtual PC, for the Intel-based Mac is similar to creating a version 1.0 release due to how closely the product integrates with Mac hardware,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
She added that the need for virtualization should be satisfied through alternatives provided by Apple and others.
That’s certainly true enough. In addition to Apple’s Boot Camp dual booting support, VMware announced they were bringing their virtualization technology to Mac OS X, as previously had startup Parallels. Another startup named TransGaming has developed a “portability engine” for Windows games called Cider that is claimed to have been adopted by a number of top tier games publishers to provide Mac compatibility.
Scattered in Microsoft’s umbrella press release for the second day of their World Partner Conference 2006 was a variety of virtualization news including that Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 is now a free download like its cousin, Virtual Server 2005 R2:
One new benefit (of Microsoft’s Software Assurance offering) for Windows Vista Enterprise customers is the right to install four copies of the operating system in virtual machines on a desktop for a single user. This new benefit provides unique value for customers addressing application compatibility through virtualization. Responding to changing market conditions, Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is available immediately for free download. In addition, Virtual PC 2007, which supports Microsoft Windows Vista, will be available for free in 2007.
You can download it here. The “changing market conditions” is the ongoing price war in the virtualization space between Microsoft and VMware (owned by EMC) where the virtualization offerings have become loss leaders to get customers to buy something else like Microsoft Software Assurance mentioned above.
Also related:
Beginning Oct. 1, 2006, customers will be able to purchase Windows Server 2003 R2, Datacenter Edition, from Microsoft resellers and account managers on their Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement as well as from OEMs preinstalled on servers with two to 64 processors, with or without the Datacenter High Availability Program. Windows Server, Datacenter Edition, licenses will also include the right to run unlimited virtual instances on one server at no additional charge, which can potentially extend the savings customers can realize through server consolidation on the Windows Server platform.
This one is rather odd because part of the cachet of Datacenter was always that you could only buy it from an OEM with strict support guarantees. The unlimited virtual instances of Datacenter isn’t actually new news, but now there’s a new incentive to buy a volume licensing contract and, of course, the real money makers are the Microsoft middleware licenses and associated client access licenses for what will be running on the virtual machines. Microsoft is planning on bundling virtualization directly into Windows Server Longhorn which will make it all the more seamless.
Finally, VMware also had an announcement today that illustrates their monetization strategy as Nate Mook reports at Betanews:
VMware on Wednesday released the final version of its VMware Server virtualization product, the successor to GSX Server. Just like the beta release that debuted in February, VMware is making the software available free of charge, much like Microsoft has done with Virtual Server 2005 R2.The company hopes that by giving away its entry-level product, it will drive users to upgrade to its for-pay ESX Server, as well as position the company as the leader in virtualization technology. While VMware Server will require a “host” operating system in order to use its features, ESX requires no host.
The selling point for ESX is lower overhead and better resource allocation than virtualization based on a Windows operating system. That certainly has its attractions, but the single revenue source makes them vulnerable to “good enough” arguments and improving Microsoft technology.
Delivering the industry’s first hardware virtualization support for desktop PCs, Intel Corporation debuted new processors today that offer businesses improved manageability and bolstered security.
Virtualization allows a platform to run multiple operating systems or applications in independent partitions or “containers” that can be tailored for specific needs such as IT management services and protecting networked assets.
“With innovations such as Intel® Virtualization Technology built-in, Intel is at the forefront of tackling some of the biggest IT challenges facing businesses today,” said Robert B. Crooke, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Business Client Group. “Analysts believe virtualization is one of the most disruptive technologies to the PC in a decade, and our technology combined with our industry enabling efforts are going to help bring this into the mainstream.**”
With virtualization support, businesses can maintain full control of a portion of a PC to run security or management services without interrupting the end-user or allowing them to easily tamper with critical applications. Businesses can better protect themselves from malicious code or viruses by filtering network traffic through a separate IT partition before it reaches the user.
This doesn’t sound like virtualization like I think of it – a test VM on a developer machine or multiple server VMs running on a server.
Lenovo is now offering Intel® Virtualization Technology-based pilot systems to select customers, and broad support for desktop PC solutions from several other system manufacturers is expected in the first quarter of 2006. In addition, leading industry virtualization solution providers including VMware, Microsoft and Xen have joined Intel in support of Intel Virtualization Technology on future Intel processor-based PCs and servers.
More Intel details here including the processor instruction changes for IA32 (and EM64T) and Itanium. John G. Spooner has some background and information on AMD’s parallel Pacifica project.
