I actually intended on writing a small paragraph on Microsoft Excel’s conditional formatting that hopefully I’ll get to at some other time. The reason for the shift is due to today being one of the more exciting days I’ve had in a while. I’m not sure how many others can appreciate why, but here goes:: I received the much anticipated copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2004.

I tried explaining my outwardly expressive excitement to a relative and their direct response, ‘You’re a nerd!’ I am not certain how I should have taken that, but being a bit defensive; I went ahead and denied it profusely. Should I have a bit of resentment towards that comment?

Immediately following my repudiation, I continue along like I was a kid in a candy store. For those that aren’t fully aware of what this program does, it basically, allows you to run many virtual machines simultaneously on one desktop. Not only are these acting as separate machines, but they’re in there own (separate) space and have their own (separate) operating systems and applications installed. Note: It doesn’t come with anything other than the Virtual PC software so you’ll need to make sure you have your own legitimate copies of the operating systems that you intend to install. This would also hold true for any of the applications you install on the Virtual PC as well. I’d read the licensing carefully. I am a firm believer that an author’s license agreement should be honored.

Another thing [with this software] that caused my great excitement is that each Virtual PC is contained within one individual file on the host machine. Tell me that this isn’t sweet. Just think of all the potential things this could mean. You can easily backup the file and have ‘virtually’ a complete system backup. Each file is virtually its own machine, so you could set up the host bare bones and use one of the virtual machines as your main system. In the event of a host failure you could quickly get the Virtual Machine running of a different host. Provided you have the proper backup of course. This results in a quasi-disaster recovery plan. This also allows for a nice avenue to go in and test some tweaks and setting changes here and there and then simply replace a file to get you back to square one. There is an undo disk option that I haven’t played with that claims allow for reverting back to a previous state.

The added bonus is application testing with different operating systems. The testing of applications at various levels of patching and service packs on these systems before rollout is simplified 10,000 fold. Did I mention each Virtual Machine is in one file? Think of how quickly you can replace a tragically altered Virtual Machine. Gone are the days of separate machine(s) for pre-deployment testing. A robust production machine can quickly test a wide range of scenarios with far less space and equipment minimizing down time.

Each machine is customizable to the extent of memory and system resources. From my experience thus far it has access to most all of the host system’s hardware resources. You can even specify which NIC a Virtual Machine will use (if you have more than one or if at all).

If it is any indication of my level of excitement is that I dug into the treasure archive and set up a Virtual Machine with my old MS-DOS 6.22 disks. I haven’t touched a floppy in years, but figured it’d be a nice ‘to have around’ setup. I even found some DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 disks. Those will get setup as well. Why install them? Who knows, but they all will reside in their own files. The file sizes don’t seem to be bulky at all, in fact it seems to be the opposite it is not a 1:1 relationship. I did also go through the motions wiith Windows 98SE, Windows XP Home and Windows 2000 Pro Virtual Machine and they all initially seem to work well.

Next up at bat is Fedora with Open Office…… a nice slow transition……

Labels: Apps, Information, Tech