“The core scenario around this product is helping customers solve application compatibility issues, and we wanted to provide a cost-effective price point for them,” she said.

The technology will run almost any x86 operating system in a Virtual PC environment, Huffman stressed. “So Linux can be installed on a virtual machine on Virtual PC. There has been some misunderstanding about this: You absolutely can run Linux in Virtual PC,” she said.

“We have not removed any technical features that supported other non-Microsoft operating systems. So there is no negative impact to customers to running non-Microsoft operating systems on Virtual PC,” she said.