With the announcement that:

- Microsoft's Virtual PC is to be free (as in beer)

- VMware's Server 1.0 released - for free.

- Microsoft's Vista Enterprise Edition users will be able to install up to 4 copies in a virtual machine, for a single user on a single device.

and Microsoft's Virtual Server having made the transition from a paid-for product to a free download some time ago, the topic of virtualisation is getting hotter by the minute.

Likewise, having made the transition to the Intel Core Duo architecture which supports virtulisation in hardware, Apple have now made it possible to run virtual machines at near native speed (as witnessed by Parallel's Desktop for OS X) all on the same machine. VMware have said that they already have a OS X version of their Workstation product running in their labs, so they can't be far off from producing a commercial (or perhaps even free) product for Mac users.

Having the ability to run virtually (ha!) any operating system at the same time and using and developing Windows or Linux programs on a Mac is true productivity. It's dramatically reduced the need for KVMs both at work and at home. I can run Linux on a Windows server, and Windows server on a Linux machine. The possibilities are endless.

It's now a golden age for virtualisation, and may long developments like these continue!

M.