Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 review:5 stars (I am loving it!) - Yesterday evening I downloaded the virtual pc 45 day trial from microsoft to try out on my tablet pc. Within an hour, using only my net connection (no floppy, no cdrom) I had a running Debian Linux system. This really rocks!

I have already placed an order for the licensed package here on Amazon.

4 stars (Using Minix on Virtual PC for Windows free demo version) - My interest in Virtual PC is for experimenting with the Minix operating system without repartitioning the hard disk. Minix is meant for educational use, and university lab PCs are not always available for dedicated use. I downloaded the free VPC for Windows demo. I found VPC easy to install on a Windows 2000 system. However, the link to Microsoft support on the startup page did not work for me.

Installing Minix on a VPC virtual disk was another matter. The standard Minix installation method, which is to boot a Minix floppy disk into a RAM disk, fails. Others have reported similar failures with VPC for Mac as well as VPC for Windows.

Minix can be started in "DOSMinix" mode, which uses a FAT file system as a simulated disk, and another Minix user has provided a ready-to-run DOSMinix-on-FreeDOS VPC image file, which I found works OK. Minix worked well as far as I tested it. I found that I could set rootdev=ram in the boot monitor and run with the root on a RAMdisk, even though people who have tried to do a conventional installation of Minix onto a Virtual PC virtual disk have seen messages about inability to open the RAMdisk. I created a second virtual hard disk and was unable to format it with FreeDOS, but Minix was able to partition it and create file systems on the partitions, so this may be a route to making a true native Minix installation on Virtual PC. I recompiled the Minix system in a time that seemed normal for the PII-266 system I was using. I haven't checked out the floppy disk or CD-ROM interfaces yet, and I don't expect networking will work, since there is no Minix driver for the emulated DEC 21140 ethernet interface that Virtual PC presents to guest systems.

Problems: I had some problems with the keyboard interface while using Minix on FreeDOS on Virtual PC. Occasionally there would be long periods when Minix would not respond to keypresses, alternating with periods in which Minix acted as if the keys were bouncing, with multiple characters echoed for a single keypress. Caveat: my test system for the above installation was a 266 Mhz Pentium II, and Microsoft specifies a 400 Mhz system as a requirement for Virtual PC, so the problems I observed may not be seen on a faster system.

Comparison with alternatives: Minix does not have a graphical user interface, it's a command line system, and it works well even on old slow PCs with limited resources. So even though the Bochs emulator is much slower than either Virtual PC or VMWare, Minix on Bochs works well enough on any Pentium-class system, and of course Bochs is free and available for multiple platforms. Minix on FreeDOS on Virtual PC is about as fast as Minix on VMWare, and is definitely a less expensive alternative than VMWare. Also, my sense is that VMWare's target market is not the home or educational user, it is the business or ISP that wants to run heavy-duty servers as virtual machines. So I would expect support for the kind of use that interests me might be better from Microsoft than from VMWare. Of course this is conjecture, I haven't asked for support from either Microsoft or VMWare.

Additional support for Minix in any virtual or emulated environment is likely to come from users, so a web search for Minix + Virtual PC may yield useful hints. The same would, of course, apply with VMWare or Bochs.

Bottom line: VPC looks useful enough for my somewhat specialized purpose that I will probably buy a copy when the free trial expires.5 stars (Fast, stable, great for keeping viruses at bay) - My first experience with Virtual PC was years ago, when I had a Macintosh but also tons of Windows-envy, so I bought VPC for Mac OS so I could run Windows-only programs.

Fast-forward to 2004. I think Virtual PC is a should-have for every computer enthusiast. No longer a Windows programmer/developer but just an end user, I myself use it for the following:

- Web surfing. By setting up a separate, virtual PC for web surfing, I can keep viruses, trojans and spyware away from my underlying PC, which I use to do real work. Should a virus or worm hit the virtual PC, I just delete that VPC file and re-create another virtual machine.

Let's face it, since Windows is so popular and runs on 95+% of all personal computers, you'll always have virus writers attacking it relentlessly, no matter how Microsoft tries to improve security. (Back in the late 80s when I was a Unix guru, I used to witness a lot of hackers trying, often successfully to some extent, to crack Unix.) Esp. if you (ahem!) visit mature websites a lot, you should set up a virtual PC to isolate your treasured host system from getting infected.

BTW, AVG is a free personal-use-only anti-virus program from grisoft dot com. It's reliable and contiuously updated, just like the other major AV programs. Be sure to install AVG on your host machine (as well as virtual machine). It's just great.

- Testing new hardware. I'm a gadget freak. Since hardware drivers can often wreak havoc on a system, I use a virtual machine to test-install drivers first. VPC 2004 fully emulates Intel/AMD hardware so when you install another copy of Windows (which you need to buy separately), everything runs smoothly and as expected. It's even plug-n-play if you virtual machine runs WinXP.

- Playing with Linux. Nowadays it's easier than ever to install various Linux distributions, but 1) installing Linux often still requires you to create a separate partition, something I just detest, and 2) if you want to try more than one Linux ditribution it can be a mess to manage. VPC 2004 makes everything as simple as 1-2-3. One, create a virtual machine. Two, install Linux on that virtual machine which pretends to be a complete PC with one hard drive. Three, set up your device drivers within Linux without worrying about messing things up in the underlying system.

VPC 2004 so far has proven totally fast and stable. The only "downside" is, you are not getting any OS with this, so you need to buy a separate Windows installation package (or get Linux). But then, for a hundred bucks, you can create as many virtual machines as you want, and even run them at the same time if you have enough RAM.

Speaking of RAM, be sure to have *at least* 512MB on your underlying system, even if you just plan to use VPC to run plain ol' MS-DOS.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Features:
Computer software (programs)
Utilities
Maintenance
Diagnostics (Diagnostic)
Disk Drive Partitions (Hard)
Cross Platform
Compatible (Compatibility)
CD
Virtual disk support; support for most x86 Oses with no custom drivers
Re-architected to ensure that it meets Microsoft's most stringent security standards
Support for up to 4 GB of memory and up to 4 network adapters
New file-based configuration of virtual machines; OS/2 integration features
Virtual machine additions; portable VHDs; differencing and undo disks

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 109.99USD.