MS making free downloads of Win7, 8 and 10 virtual images available

[GreyGeek]

at: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-u...ols/vms/linux/

The catch. In installation is good only for 90 days. They recommend making a snapshot just after you install it on VirtualBox and then when the 90 days are over recall the snapshot. Rinse and repeat as long as you want! (MS's suggestion)

Apparently they are getting desperate to lure people back to Windows.

[dibl]

Windows 7, 8, and 10 are good enough OS's that there is little reason to upgrade any of them for the life of the system hardware. And recent vintage hardware is more reliable than ever -- I've got a Dell E6500 running linux on an SSD that might outlive me! Consequently, sales of new PCs of all kinds, plus sales of OS upgrades, are pretty flat these days.

[claydoh]

They have offered free vm's for quite a while now, for testing IE browsers.
For some Windows versions it is not difficult to re-arm them, and actually the ones I have used even provide directions on how to do it right on the desktop wallpaper.

[GreyGeek]

I generally don't keep up with Windows so this offering was new to me. 4.5Gb is a fat download! I haven't decided if I want to run it as a guest OS or not. Do you know if it is limited in any way? Certain things it won't configure or executables it won't run?

[claydoh]

Not really, other than I could not get any windows based tools used to root or flash or update any of my android devices to connect using any of these images, though doing an actual install in virtual box, they worked just fine. It is all I ever tried using them for, other than installing Chrome or firefox in addition to the tools.

[GreyGeek]

Thanks. I haven't installed VirtualBox and I am not sure I want to go through all of that just to play around with Win10. I can think of nothing that I'd use it for other than confirming that having played with it on a friend's computer I decided that I don't like it.

[Goeroeboeroe]

It's so big because you get the whole os. It's the only way to run Internet Explorer in a reliable way for testing purposes.
I found one limitation: it's almost impossible to run more heavy graphic applications. Some browsers even refuse to play a simple video. Apart from that it's exactly the same as the normal Windows. Including trying to get you to install the newest browser. They offer these free virtual environments (for years by now, by the way) for testing older browsers, and then ask you all of the time to install a newer browser...

[GreyGeek]

... They offer these free virtual environments (for years by now, by the way) ...

Gee, I must have been living in another world!

Thanks for the info. From what you and Claydoh say I doubt that I will be playing with it. Now to go recover 4.5 GB of HD space!

[GreyGeek]

Windows 7, 8, and 10 are good enough OS's that there is little reason to upgrade any of them for the life of the system hardware. And recent vintage hardware is more reliable than ever -- I've got a Dell E6500 running linux on an SSD that might outlive me! Consequently, sales of new PCs of all kinds, plus sales of OS upgrades, are pretty flat these days.

Those numbers don't include the loss of WinX installations that have been replaced by Linux, WinX's marketshare is even less.

My Acer was purchased in 2010. That's two generations ago! As long as the thermal paste doesn't dry out or a component fails I'll be using this laptop for the foreseeable future. If my HD fails I can replace it with an USB 2.0 SSD. If my display or keyboard or network chips fail this box is toast. The only thing I use it for is Stellarium, Steam's Universe Sandbox^2, SAGE and Minecraft. Everything else, including all banking, bill paying, online shopping, browsing, etc..., and much of the posting on this site, I do with my iPhone6+. It is 1 1/2 years old now and from what I've read the battery drops to about 50% power in two years. To replace the battery I'd have to send the phone and $138 to Apple and wait a couple weeks for it to come back. The nearest Apple service center is 70 miles away but even they send battery replacement jobs to China.