Microsoft To Ship Virtual PC 2004 At Steep Discount

The Redmond, Wash.-based software company, which acquired the products and assets of Connectix last February, will make the updated Virtual PC title available at a list price of $129, the company said. Connectix had sold the software for $229. Microsoft's Virtual PC will hit retail stores on Dec. 2.

Virtual PC allows customers to run multiple operating systems on a single machine. While it is intended to support multiple Windows OS images, Linux virtual machines will be supported in hosted mode, executives said.

Virtual PC 2004 will be included in Microsoft's MSDN Professional, Enterprise and Universal subscriptions, Microsoft said. Volume discounts will be available through Microsoft's Open, Select and Enterprise Agreement licensing programs.

One systems integrator said the software will help customers test new software, such as the forthcoming Longhorn edition of Windows or 64-bit Windows, even as they run existing Windows XP and 2000 applications.

"With Virtual PC, you can run software that requires hardware you don't yet have available, or if you want to test 64-bit software versions without duplicating the hardware," said John Parkinson, chief technologist for the North American Region at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

Microsoft is also getting its Virtual Server product ready for beta-testing. The company had originally planned to ship the server software by the end of the year, but its release has been delayed until the first half of 2004, a company spokeswoman said. The software will allow customers to run multiple versions of Windows on a single server.