Virtual PC 2007 on Vista
I am a bit nervous about VMware on Vista right now and concerned about the upgrade costs to move from 5.5 to 6. So for now I am leaving VMware on my servers. For my clients I have installed Virtual PC 2007 and have been pleasently surprised by the following:
- I like the UI, its clean and simple. The menus are unobtrusive and provide all the key functions
- I like the fact that when I resize the window, the video driver changes resolution automatically
- I really like the fact that it now supports – VMware like – virtual folders, these are important to me because they allow me to establish a VPN session from the Virtual PC and still access my local hard drives (without a split tunnel)
- I like the fact that I can drag and drop files from my host PC into the Virtual PC
- performance seems pretty good, I haven’t done any benchmarking but its certainly fast enough for casual use and testing
None of these things differentiates Virtual PC from VMware, but they are enough to make Virtual PC good enough, so I can’t see me upgrading to VMware 6 with any urgency – at least right now – and I definitely think that for most people who need a it Virtual PC will meet all of their needs.
The download is here
The Tech overview is here (XPS)
