Although on the Windows virtualization team here, it's heads down working on the next generation of virtual machine support to be built into Windows Longhorn server with a "hypervisor" architecture, we're absolutely not sitting still on the Virtual Server 2005 R2 product which became free a couple of weeks back.

There will be a couple of beta releases of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 - today we are announcing the availabilty of beta 1. You can download it by applying through Microsoft Connect. You'll need a passport account to log on to that site. Scroll down to the bottom and click Apply. It could take up to 24 hours to get an email back with the link for download. Read more