Painfully Obvious.

Comments

1. Adam Vandenberg Dec 1st, 2006 at 5:18 pm

   Apparently they only value the relationship until April 1, 2007.

2. Andrew Dec 1st, 2006 at 8:22 pm

   Adam, the fact remains that this makes life easier for me and people like me. Something is better than nothing. And I’m sure the “expiration date” of the boot image was some sort of compromise they had to make with higher-ups. I’m confident they won’t leave us out in the cold once this image expires.

3. justin Dec 2nd, 2006 at 1:49 am

   That’s pretty cool of Microsoft, but my initial shock wore off when I read the line about “time bomb”. Only Microsoft would go through the odd contortions of building a custom version of XP that was actually capable of disabling itself after a certain day (I’m sure they already covered the amazing trick of setting the clock back).

   Andrew, you may want to checkout your home page. It’s a little different than what I’d expect from you.

4. Andrew Dec 2nd, 2006 at 2:50 pm

   Andrew, you may want to checkout your home page. It’s a little different than what I’d expect from you.

   Zoinks! That’s what I get for not upgrading WordPress in a timely manner. Thanks for the heads-up.

   As for your “only Microsoft” comment: I disagree. I think most other companies would do something like that, except none of them is the market leader in consumer operating systems. I’m not saying it’s not silly, but it’s not out-of-character.

   I remember the hostile reception Chris Wilson got at last year’s SXSW when he was asked about how people could run IE6 and IE7 on the same machine. His answer was “VirtualPC,” after which someone sarcastically shouted, “That’s free for developers, right?” Well, now it is free, and now it’s practically hassle-free, too, so I’m a lot better off right now than I was a year ago.

5. justin Dec 2nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm

   I see your point that my “only Microsoft” comment isn’t entirely accurate, and that is pretty cool that they’ve decided to make VirtualPC free.

   The problem is, now that we have Parallels (and probably VMWare pretty soon), VirtualPC is terribly outclassed. I think making VirtualPC free was the only possibility to stay in the VM game, but even then, people would rather pay for something that performed better (Parallels), so Microsoft decided to hand out an XP VM to further lure people to use their software. It’s just a silly game.

6. Andrew Dec 2nd, 2006 at 5:06 pm

   I think making VirtualPC free was the only possibility to stay in the VM game, but even then, people would rather pay for something that performed better (Parallels), so Microsoft decided to hand out an XP VM to further lure people to use their software. It’s just a silly game.

   I don’t agree with this. Microsoft has no incentive to get people using VirtualPC instead of Parallels. Only the PC version is free, and they’ve disconinued the Mac version, so the two aren’t in competion. (Unless you’re talking about the PC version of Parallels.)

   Also, don’t anthropomorphize Microsoft; it doesn’t “decide” anything with one nefarious voice. I’m guessing the IE team asked for an image of XP+IE6 that it could distribute for free, someone in management said, “Hell, no, it’d just be an invitation to piracy,” but the management agreed to the silly compromise of time-bombing the image. If there’s anything I’ve learned from working at a large software company, it’s that nothing adds more silliness than bureaucracy.

7. justin Dec 2nd, 2006 at 7:14 pm

   Only the PC version is free, and they’ve disconinued the Mac version,

   Ahh, that makes everything I said pretty pointless then :)
   Note to self: know what you’re talking about in the future.