The concept of virtual machines has been around for quite some time now. I haven’t really had a chance to see it in action until using Parallels at work.
Today I was reading in PC World about Virtual PC 2007. One of the big selling points (for me) is that it’s free.
As it’s getting time to upgrade my desktop, I’ve been kicking around quite a few ideas. The main problem is that I have several ‘machines’ that I’d like to keep separate. The Virus Lock is really cool, but is only for PATA drives. I’ve tinkered with different user accounts as well as different hardware profiles … but I don’t deem those as being ‘secure’.
So today I stumbled across Virtual PC 2007 and VMWare and this is the gist of how it works.
You have a ‘host’ operating system (the system that appears when you turn your machine on) and then you can have other operating systems as your ‘guest’. This keeps all of your machines separate should a virus infection occur. Is it paranoia, or good security practice? I’m not sure. But it’s a neat idea for the average person.
Until next time …
-D