Microsoft's acquisition of Connectix's assets is beginning to bear fruit on the Windows side of the market.

The software giant Monday plans to announce the release to manufacturing of its newly branded and enhanced Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, formerly known as Connectix Virtual PC.

The desktop software, expected to be available within the next 90 days, will allow customers to run multiple versions of Windows on the same desktop, as well as Mac and Linux on virtual machines.

Microsoft, which acquired Connectix's assets in February, shipped Virtual PC for Mac - 6.1 in August.

Running multiple operating systems in virtual machines on the same PC is ideal for corporations that want to test out and ensure quality of applications on newer versions of Windows before they go through an upgrade cycle, or for developers who wish to run both Unix/Linux and Windows applications on the same box, observers note.

View: Full Article
News source: CRN.com via Neowin

I already have it, its pretty good. Slightly faster than old versions, but I'm getting a few difficulties setting up Linux on this version.

ok stupid question alert: this wont happen to let ppl run OS X on x86 will it?

according to that line "as well as Mac and Linux on virtual machines", id hope so

w00t

I don't see how it can... the Virtual PC is just that - it emulates an Intel x86 based system, so how can you run Mac OS' on that? Linux you can of course, because Linux distros are made for x86 as well as other architectures.

Whoever wrote the article is confused. The Mac version will emulate PCs, the PC version will not emulate Macs.

Looking forward to it...
While talking about Virtual PC, I have VPC 4 (I think) and I can not get any better resolution in my guest OS's than 4 bit... pretty crappy when trying to view LH4051... anyone know how to up the resolution.. I could not find it this morning...
IN any event, I might just switch to Vmware till VPC 2004 comes out...

ok but y is that? i mean a mac can emu a pc but not the other way around? sux

Because the PowerPC architecture is much simpler and more flexible architecture than the x86 one is. RISC cores can do a lot of things easier than CISC ones can.

The old Motorola 68000 architecture is quite easy to emulate within an x86 host. MacOS, up to 8.1 (the latest to ship with a 68k version before the move to pure PPC code), runs within Windows or Linux with BasiliskII quite well. But it's about as outdated as Win95 OSR2 was...
Also, you need the ROM of an original Macintosh to emulate a MAC, as well as MacOS (MacOS 7.5.3 is officially considered as abandonware as you can download it directly from Apple"s web site). Both of these are warez, so don't ask...