Vista Home Virtualization Permitted

Home editions of Windows Vista may be used in virtual machines, Microsoft has finally decided, after wrestling with the issue for more than a year. The company said in Jan. 2008 that the End User License Agreements (EULAs) for Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium would be amended to remove clauses that prohibited running those editions or using content protected by digital rights management in virtual machines. The change could boost interest in desktop virtualization on both the PC and Macintosh and generate some incremental revenue for Microsoft.

Flip-Flop

Before Vista was released, Microsoft indicated that the home editions would not be licensed for use in virtual environments, although business editions would be. In addition, Vista Enterprise, a special version available only to volume licensing customers with Software Assurance (for upgrade rights and other benefits) on the client OS, came with the right to install the OS in up to four virtual machines (VMs) at no additional cost. Developers were permitted to run the home editions in VMs when developing software that would run on them.