Just like VMWare's Virtual Server, the VMWare Player, Xen (and of course Microsoft's Virtual Server) Microsoft Virtual PC is now free!

Now we can all play with virtualization and acquire the knowledge and experience we need to survive before inevitably becoming the non-virtualised dinosaur generation of IT guru's…

Microsoft today announced Virtual PC 2004 with ServicePack 1 and the upcoming Virtual PC 2007 software will be available free of charge. This means Microsoft Windows XP users can use virtualisation on their desktops now and Microsoft Windows Vista users will be able to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 when it arrives!

As a free bonus Windows users with Software Assurance (SA) can use a Microsoft Windows OS as the ‘guest OS’ within the same Microsoft Windows XP Professional license. Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Edition users will even be able to use up to 4 virtual machines as guest OS’s within their licenses, which makes the lives of our software testers and programmers a lot more fun!

Check it out here!