Updated: July 9, 2020 (November 17, 2003)

First Virtual PC Product Released

Michael analyzed and wrote about Microsoft's operating systems, including the Windows client OS, as well as compliance and governance. Michael... more

Virtual PC 2004, Microsoft’s first virtual machine or OS emulation software, has been released to manufacturing and should be available in Dec. 2003. Although customers typically use virtual machines to test or evaluate software, Microsoft is promoting Virtual PC, gained in the Feb. 2003 acquisition of Connectix, as a way for organizations to upgrade to the latest version of Windows without having to scrap legacy applications that require older OSs. With this usage in mind, Microsoft is keeping the acquisition costs of Virtual PC 2004 attractive, but users must still license the guest OS and applications running on it.

Virtual Machines

A virtual machine emulates a complete computer, including the processor, memory, graphics card, network interface, and storage devices (such as disk and CD-ROM drives) in software. This virtualized hardware gives users access to multiple OSs (called “guest” OSs) and applications running on one physical PC with its installed OS (called the “host” OS). (For an illustration, see “Virtual PC 2004 Architecture“.)

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