Microsoft Corp. on Monday will announce the release of its Virtual PC technology to manufacturing

Microsoft Corp. on Monday will announce the release of its Virtual PC technology to manufacturing and that the final product will be available to customers by the end of this year at a lower price than the original Connectix product. Microsoft in February acquired the Virtual Machine assets of Connectix Corp., a privately held company in San Mateo, Calif., that has been involved in Virtual Machine (VM) technology since its inception in 1988. Carla Huffman, Microsoft's product manager for the Virtual PC, told eWEEK that the software will be available by the end of the year, through Microsoft's existing retail and volume licensing channels, for an estimated retail price of $129, $100 less than the Connectix price of $229. "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. The confusion around the product has been around official Microsoft product support services, Huffman said, adding that Microsoft is treating the use of Linux the same way it treats the use of any third-party application on a Windows operating system.