Vista virtualisation not grown-up yet

SOFTWARE GIANT MICROSOFT says that the reason that punters will not be allowed to run home versions of Vista as virtual machines is because the technology is not mature enough.

Vole specifies in its licence that it will be illegal for punters to install home versions of Vista in a Virtual Machine. While the more cynical of use out there believe this is probably so that Apple and Linux customers will have to pay out more to install Vista on their machines, a spokesVole told ZDNet Asia that the consumer market was not ready for such technology.

Business users are apparently big enough and ugly enough to know what to do with it. The spokesVole said that the technology was only being used by business customers who had software compatibility needs. There were also technology enthusiasts but they were not going to be seen dead buying a home version of Vista, the spokesVole said.

Vole's view has the backing of Gartner's research vice president Michael Silver who wrote in his bog that there is a risk that a virtual machine rootkit could be installed by someone who did not know what they were doing.

But he thinks that Vole is more interested in restricting the licence than it is about protecting home users.

Silver said that the way Vole had written the licence was so that a customer who wanted to run Windows Vista under VMware on a Mac will either violate Microsoft's licence or pay up more for a business version. So the whole thing is a bit like a Volish Apple and Linux tax.

More here. µ