Microsoft is giving away Virtual PC 2007 and, on my 2 GHz Core 2 Duo machine (with 2 gigs of RAM) it was (1) a natural choice for those few programs that won't run under Vista, but will run under XP Pro, and (2) an easy way to play around with Linux, which I've been meaning to do for a while. I couldn't get my VPN software (TheGreenbow) to run under Vista and didn't want to spend $150 or so on a new VPN client. TheGreenbow runs great under Vitual PC 2007 and XP Pro and the CPU overhead is so low on my machine that, literally, I don't notice the difference with both OSs running at the same time. Now that I've got Ubuntu running, I notice that it is considerably slower than XP Pro (and, of course, Vista) and also rather bland -- it's chief virtue seems to be that it looks like Windows but its Not Windows. I doubt if I'll use it as anything more than a novelty.

Now, a Linux server is another story -- I've got to figure out what's going on with Ubuntu server on my old desktop, as I'd really like to set it up as an FTP and file server.