Armchair Arcade TV is now in high definition (720p) and available at a wide range of locations, with a wide range of subscription options, and in a wide range of formats, including YouTube, iTunes, RSS, and many more via blip.tv!

I heard about this from Leo Laporte on one of his TWiT.TV podcasts, specifically "Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy!", May 13, 2009, edition. Apparently Windows 7 is the "best Windows ever", is terrifically stable and performs much better on the same hardware than Vista. The best part? Microsoft is giving out unlimited product keys for both the 32- and 64-bit versions until at least June of this year, and the free license won't expire until March 2010. I'm very, very tempted to give this a go on my home Gateway Tablet PC, though as a critical "production" system and considering my present time constraints, I'm not really looking forward to dealing with any potential issues. With that said, I wouldn't mind more stability than I'm getting from Vista and I certainly have trouble resisting trying new tech.

One other interesting thing that Laporte mentioned - and I may have misheard since I was doing other stuff while listening - is that this release candidate may include the embedded version of Windows XP that runs under the embedded version of Virtual PC. I have been unable to verify that as of this writing, though I could just not have seen it in Microsoft's notes. That would certainly be another big plus in my book, as I have a few software items that require XP. (At the same time, I am running low on hard drive space, so the point is probably moot anyway in my case.)

Anyone else considering this? The download and more information are on the official Microsoft Website, here.

The latest version of VirtualBox (2.1.0) sports a preliminary accelerated 3D graphics layer which

Snes9x - one of the first Snes emulators out there - is now compatible with Vista.

Baboom!

WinUAE - the Unusable Amiga Emulator - isn't as unusable as it was in the past. The latest Windows versions have made huge strides. The latest release - WinUAE 1.4.6 - features a nice drop down menu that makes it possible to quickly select the appropriate machines.

On Lemonade - thanks Oldschool!
Lemonade Initial Configuration

For those of you who would like to try out CD32/CDTV games and don't have access to a machine you might want to check out Akiko - it is a shareware emulator of German origins created by Airsoft.

Freeware utilities making it possible to run Windows on top of other operating systems are available in various flavours like Bochs, Qemu, Virtual Box, Virtual PC. The pay ware versions like VMware and Parallels also do a good job.