Play with Longhorn without installing?

I think perhaps Julie is onto something with this post:

I really don't want to install longhorn if I'm already seeing people more adept than me having problems. But I'd love to play with with some code and then build it like Don Box is doing and Sam is doing.

As I said in a comment on her blog, I think Julie gives herself too little credit (and me too much!), but I think she may have hit on a cool idea...

Perhaps some kind soul (or perhaps even Microsoft, a la the Visual Studio online eval) could set up a beefy box with the Longhorn bits and (for a nominal fee) open it up as a playground for folks who don't have an extra machine to put Longhorn on. CAVEAT: I have no idea whether such an idea is feasible from a licensing standpoint, but it would make it easier for more people to get access to Longhorn.

2 Comments

  • This cries out for a Virtual Server session that was used when Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio 2003 was launched. I had the experience of trying this out and even though it was across the internet via a 56k dialup the performance was astonishing.

  • Interestingly enough, I just Remote Desktopped into my home machine and fired up VPC to test something in Longhorn. VS.NET Whidbey crashed every time I tried to run it. This never happens when I'm at home. Weird!

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