[thelist] IE7 confuddlement

Ken Schaefer Ken at adOpenStatic.com
Wed Jul 12 22:57:51 CDT 2006


: -----Original Message-----
: From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-
: bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Paul Bennett
: Sent: Thursday, 13 July 2006 1:46 PM
: To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
: Subject: Re: [thelist] IE7 confuddlement
: 
: >As of last night, Virtual PC 2004 SP1 is now free to download. Why
: >don't you just put IE7 in a virtualized copy of Windows (assuming 
: >you have a license)?
: 
: It must be my month. I've recently found out that the Google Mini is
: shipping to New Zealand and now Virtual PC is free.
: 
: I'm trying it now - thanks Ken.
: 
: Do you think this (Virtual PC free release) has anything to do with
: Andy Clarke's comments at MIX06?

I don't know what Andy Clarke said at Mix06. In fact, until today, I'd never
heard of him. I don't see why releasing VPC for free would have anything to
do with what a web design company's creative director would say though.

I think there were a couple of drivers for this release:
a) Microsoft makes a lot of development tools available cheaply or freely. It
would probably make them all free if it weren't for certain problems that
would arise with regulators :-)

b) There's somewhat of an ongoing battle with VMWare for
marketshare/mindshare in the virtualization space. Microsoft's main driver
for providing virtualization would be to get customers off legacy OSes (like
NT) by enabling customers to virtualise them. However I would see VMWare
seeing this as a theat. As of today, VMWare Server (successor to GSX Server)
is available for free from VMWare, and VMWare has a free Player product.
Microsoft has released Virtual Server 2005 R2 for free, as well as VPC. Which
is all good news for IT folks :-)

c) Ben Armstrong (Virtual PC PM) has been hinting at this for quite some
time. Certainly long before MIX06 was this announcement being considered (or
already decided). There have been things posted to his blog, and also to
various VPC communities (and private MVP forums) hinting this.
http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/

Cheers
Ken



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