Get Windows XP Free With a Catch

Soon a free virtualized copy of Windows XP SP2 will be freely distributed by Microsoft so it can help developers switch IE6 programs to IE7. The only catch is the legit copy of the Windows XP will expire on April 1, 2007. You can download the PC image, with limited time, which comes with pre-activated copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. Although Microsoft says it is the only solution to run both versions of Internet Explorer browsers together, there are other ways to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer together. Microsoft does not offer support for these installations.

Recently, Microsoft has made Virtual PC 2004 a freeware software along with the release of Windows XP Service Pack 1. The company hopes to make Virtual PC 2007 a free download utility with Windows Vista support service.

If you are interested in a free copy of Windows XP, you will need Virtual PC to open the PC image when it is available. The Internet Explorer team at Microsoft is working toward the shipment of VPC images along with the previous IE versions such as Internet Explorer 5 and Multilanguage.