VirtualPC musings

Ev asks why Microsoft produces Virtual PC for Mac? and Tom wonders if you can get infected.

Let's start with Tom...

Yeah, you can get infected. I normally only use VPC to peek at Project files (not very much anymore) and to look at Visio diagrams. I also occasionally use IE to look at my site to see what I might have broken. Right now the only OS installation I have is for WinMe so I can't say for sure if the RPC virii are effective against VPC, but I'd guess that they are. I run the PC from a saved state so it's up and back down in about 10 minutes most of the time when I need it.

Why Microsoft produces Virtual PC is a little more round about.

A company called Connectix (formerly at connectix.com, the domain record is now gone I guess) created Virtual PC for Mac and a did a lot of other interesting virtual machine research in the nineties (the Virtual Game Station was a pretty amazing toy to play around with). They also did some research on JVM tweaking that never saw the light of day (as far as I know) and of course, they also would up creating Virtual PC for Windows and Virtual Server.

This fluff piece about the acquisition implies a long life for VPC Mac, we'll just have to see (I need to check my 6.x registration come to think of it).

The real reason Microsoft purchased VPC is for the Windows product and Virtual Server. Here's the Microsoft blurb. From what I've picked up over the last few months, the Virtual Server technology is already rolling into server products and will be a part of Longhorn. I believe they intend to use VPC in much the same way Apple used Classic (aka the blue box) for backward compatibility. Check the Register's spin on Virtual PC 2004.