Chris Pirillo takes on Microsoft's Virtual PC -
Indeed, I have quite a modest proposal:
Microsoft needs to license a stripped-down, slightly-modified version of VMWare 6.0 running Windows XP N - making this available for free through Windows Update for all activated users of Windows Vista. Yes, VMWare 6.0 is still in beta - but you can’t sit there and honestly tell me that beta software is any better or any worse than the bugs we’re all discovering in Windows Vista.
So, why recommend VMWare’s software over Microsoft’s own Virtual PC? That answer is exceedingly simple: VMWare is an amazingly robust virtualization tool - and it’s the only one that supports USB 2.0 device passthroughs. Virtual USB device support *ALONE* is makes it possible to run your XP-happy hardware on Windows Vista. Virtual PC is an inferior product by comparison - no arguments, my friends.
VMware” title=”http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/ws/\”>VMware” target=”_blank”>www.vmware.com/products/beta/ws/”>VMware Workstation 6.0 beta build 39849 is free for anybody to download, install, and use. I didn’t believe it would be possible - but my scanner actually works perfectly in Windows Vista… through a hardware-accelerated XP virtual machine. My FAX driver works wonderfully… through VMWare running Windows XP on top of Vista.
Apple gave its users “Classic mode” in OS X to give them some amount of backwards compatibility - and Microsoft did no such thing. In Vista (and earlier versions of Windows), you can right-click an executable and run it in “compatibility mode,” but this feature is (a) not foolproof, and (b) buried so that the average user will never find it. It’s the latter decision which brings my blood to a boil.
Microsoft: it’s not too late to save your users from further frustration. The only lucid proposal is the near-immediate deployment of a limited edition VMWare virtual machine with “N” pre-installed and ready to go. And don’t tell the world that you’re working on a new version of Virtual PC. Fact of the matter is: I got it working today, and I really believe that you can make it equally as simple for novices to do, too.
