Are you free to use those on non-Microsoft host operating system? I thought the last time I checked the host had to be Windows Professional.
Also you have to re-download the image every 3 months, and get it set up again. I can't just toss a virtualbox image on my personal Ubuntu machine and test in IE6-8. I need a Windows computer to test my personal sites (which are barely worth development time.)
"may or may not work in other hosting environments."
&
"simply shutdown the VPC image and discard the changes you’ve made from undo disks to reset the image back to its initial state. By doing either of these methods, you can technically have a base image which never expires although you will never be able to permanently save any changes on these images for longer than 90 days."
... so it seems pretty positive, really.
Which, as someone who'd like to see more Free operating systems and less proprietary ones, is a bit of a shame! :P
Yeah, I read the marketing copy too. It sounds like it's deliberately worded to avoid mentioning whether or not you're licensed to run it on Mac/Linux.
It is setup like a trial edition of Windows. It can be installed on anything really. Microsoft say the requirements are Windows XP and Above, but i did see code to convert from a VHD to a Virtual Box image. Also, you only need to download every 3 months if you want the latest, patched edition from MS. If you want to do it yourself, you can just recreate the image yourself (sysprep).
The 3 month expiry is what led to my company paying for licenses. Having to potentially pause development and spend time doing the same setup process 4 times a year is painful (and wasteful since there's no real reason apart from trivial licensing issues - the resulting install is the same).
Also you have to re-download the image every 3 months, and get it set up again. I can't just toss a virtualbox image on my personal Ubuntu machine and test in IE6-8. I need a Windows computer to test my personal sites (which are barely worth development time.)