VIRTUAL VISTA: Don't try this at home

Reports were circulating that Microsoft was about to reverse its decision to restrict home Vista users from being able to virtualize their desktops. Apparently, Microsoft has now decided to maintain its current position to only allow business users of Vista the ability to virtualize the desktop, and not extend this to the home editions.

Desktop virtualization has made rapid progress in recent months, and products like Parallels and VMPlayer have begun to become a recognized consumer product. The advantages of running desktop virtualization PCs enable organizations and individuals the ability to have many isolated different environments running on a single desktop. For example, developers would not need to have separate PCs for each and every code base that they use for development, as these could exist as separate virtual machines on a single host PC. Another example is the growth of home-working, where many employees use their home PC to connect via VPNs to work. However, by using virtual desktop technology, these users would be able to operate separate, isolated virtual environments; the advantage of this would be the employee could implement updates and policies making a non-company desktop appear as a standard desktop. This has the advantage of making the management of remote home-workers simpler as well as more secure.