I’ve come to the point where I have to install some virtual machines on my computer in order to do my work. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just download Hyper-V and go.”

Dream on.

You see, I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate. Hyper-V only runs on Windows Server 2008. That’s crazy. I can’t imagine why Microsoft can’t release a version of Hyper-V for Windows 7.

I can either re-image my machine with Windows Server, or I can buy VMWare Workstation. Or I suppose I could re-image my machine with Ubuntu Linux, install VMWare Workstation, and do all of my Windows work in virtual machines. The real choice, though, is whether I want to spend the time re-imaging my machine. VMWare Workstation is only $200. Considering the time and trouble involved in re-imaging a machine, I’m thinking that VMWare is the way to go.

On a related note, I ran across Microsoft’s Windows XP Mode download. What a well done package. A quick download (well, if 500 megabytes is “quick”), a no-hassle install, and I have a 32-bit version of Windows XP running in a virtual machine, with full access to my Windows 7 drives. It’s great for running those few 16-bit applications that I’ve been too lazy to port or to find 32-bit versions of. Highly recommended.

That XP Mode package is a brilliant piece of work, but Virtual PC (the virtualizer that XP Mode runs on) is 32-bit only. I need 64-bit, which Hyper-V supports, but Hyper-V isn’t available for Windows 7.

It confuses me sometimes how Microsoft can be so customer focused in some ways, and totally clueless to their customers’ needs in others.