14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is making available for download one copy of Windows Vista RTM and three copies of Windows XP (one with Service Pack 2 and two with Service Pack 3) for free. In this context, the free downloads continue a tradition started back in 2007 by the Redmond company. Made available on August 28, 2008, the bits that went live on the Microsoft download center can weigh as little as 421.7 MB for the smallest release, and a total of 3333.6 MB, for all the components.
All the operating systems have been activated and optimized by the Redmond giant in order to play nice as guest operating systems designed to run inside virtual machines. The XP SP2, SP3 and Vista RTM platforms have been packaged as Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC images. In this regard, the fact that they follow the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is by no means a coincidence. All the pre-configured VPC Hard Disk images are set up to enable web content developers and designers to test their products on Internet Explorer 6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 2 running on XP and Vista respectively.
All the IE application compatibility VPC images have to be integrated with Virtual PC 2007 or with Virtual Server, both also free downloads from Microsoft. The pre-configured VPC Hard Disk images are designed only for testing, and they come by default with a limited life-span. All the virtual machine images are time-bombed, with the expiration date set for January 2009 by which time Microsoft is scheduled to have already dropped the final version of Internet Explorer 8.
Microsoft provided the following details related to the components made available for download and their contents:
"- IE6-XPSP3_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE6 VHD file;
- IE7-XPSP2_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP2 with IE7 VHD file;
- IE8B2-XPSP3_VPC.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE8 Beta 2 VHD file;
- IE7-VIS1.exe+IE7-VIS2.rar+IE7-VIS3.rar contain a Vista Image with IE7 VHD file."
Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image 4.0 can be downloaded from here.