Longhorn Blogs recently reported about the dismal lack of activity from Microsoft’s Virtual PC camp, and what they would like to see in it. But we think there is a bigger question afoot: why Virtual PC?
VirtualPC is dead. It has been dead since Virtual Server became free. Virtual Server is Microsoft’s ultimate virtualization framework; and the only real VMware competitor.
The only problem is: Virtual Server is made for enterprise environments and server-based implementations. Kind of like VMware’s ESX server, but without the linux. Virtual Server is relatively fast, definitely powerful, and supports a large variety of guest operating systems. Virtual Server isn’t anywhere near as user-friendly as VPC and most certainly not even comprable to VMware, and it’s much, much, harder to set up than either of them.
But all that aside, Virtual Server is, at the very least, actively developed and isn’t outdated, and runs at much higher speeds than Virtual PC. At the end of they day, you have an enterprise-class program being distributed by Microsoft Corporation free of charge, and at the same time a dated and decrepit bit of software sold at undeservingly high prices, without the performance or updates to match.
Virtual Server is obviously the way to go, the only thing standing in the way now is but an official announcement from Microsoft, and maybe an easier GUI for Virtual Server to go along with it. But no matter what way you look at it, and whether or not you use VMware, Virtual Server, Xen, or anything else to replace it, the facts don’t change: Virtual PC is dead.