For a while now, Microsoft stopped selling new licences for the consumer anti virus software Windows Live One Care. You can get all the details on this over on the Team Blog. In the next few days my extended subscription is due to end.

I’ve been using Windows Live One Care since the beta and I’ve never had any problems with it. In fact, I feel I’ve had fewer issues with this than I’ve had with any other Anti Virus products I’ve used in the past.

One of the things I really liked about One Care was that the one licence would cover up to 3 machines. So you could protect your machine, the family machine and perhaps a grandparents machine.

One Care is pretty basic and that was all I needed. But it would let you create a family circle covering as many machines as you had licences for. This would let you keep an eye on the other computers letting you see if one or more machines were needing attention in the form of updates, overdue virus scans or “tune ups”. You also had control over the backup process on each machine which would be a great where you had something like a NAS on your network.

Now that my subscription is due to expire, I need to decide on a replacement. The obvious choice is Microsoft's latest consumer anti virus product, Security Essentials. While this is a free, the product detail on the website is a bit limited. I’m going to have to take some time this weekend to find out more information about Security Essentials and the other competing products.

Got the nod from IT support to install Windows 7 on my work machine last week. When I got some time at the weekend, I did the upgrade from Vista. It did say that it could take several hours and it really wasn't kidding. Anyway, I've been using Windows 7 for about a week now and so far I feel my laptop is running for longer between charges and the hard drive isn't getting constantly hammered as it did under Vista. Another thing I'm pleased with is the time it takes to become usable after a cold start. Restoring from Sleep and Hibernate also seem quicker as does the shutdown. There really isn't anything more annoying or distracting than having to wait for your computer to do things - well there is, but I'm just talking about computers here.

So far, I'm liking Windows 7, but wait, this task bar is a bit different - is that good?

I'm actually excited about this latest version of Windows.

Why? Well, from what I've read about Windows 7, it should run quite happily on low powered devices such as MIDs, UMPCs Netbooks or older machines. It’s even been claimed that it will “out perform” Windows XP and Vista on everyday tasks.

At home, our machines are running Windows XP, which is fine but it’s getting old, and XP will soon be unsupported by Microsoft. Unfortunately, our machines aren't really up to running Vista, they don't have enough memory or processor power to make the experience pleasant and unobtrusive. There are some really good reasons (apparently) for moving over to Vista, but the cost associated with the extra hardware and the OS are too much to justify.

Windows 7 has a lot to prove, and if it makes the same impact on Users as Vista did, then even more people are going migrate over to the Mac.

I so hope Windows 7 gives us the “Wow” that Vista didn’t.

To find out first hand, I downloaded the latest public beta from Microsoft and installed it as a Virtual Machine. If you've tried running Vista as a Virtual Machine, you'll know how bad it is. My theory is, if Windows 7 runs well as a Virtual Machine, then it should run rather well native.

So far, Windows 7 seems to perform pretty well as a virtual machine, which is also impressive given that it's a beta. I'll be honest, I've not done much with it yet - time will tell.

I have Windows Home Server installed, my home computers are connected to it and everything seems to be working well. Now, can I install Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 on the Home Server or will this break something? Only one way to find out without doing some background reading and that's to go ahead and install it.

Ready to install, OK.

So far, so good.

Finally, installed and no issues reported. Checking the Windows Home Server console suggests that all is well and the Virtual Server admin site appears to be working too. Next thing to do is add a virtual machine to the Virtual Server and see how that gets on.