According to CNET News, Microsoft is once again allowing Vista virtualization.  This is great news!

Nonetheless, Microsoft on Monday changed its mind again, saying it will allow users to run Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium as guest operating systems on a virtual machine. The news is especially welcome for Mac users who want to run the latest Windows version without having to pay an arm and a leg. Until now, Mac users and others wanting to run Vista virtually have had to fork over for the most expensive Business and Ultimate versions.

Microsoft had briefed reporters in June that it was going to expand Vista's virtualization options, but then for reasons that were never made clear, it reversed itself and never announced such a move.

The reasoning behind the limitation never made that much sense to me. Microsoft's argument was that running Vista in a virtual machine represented some security risks. The company said it was not the case that the Ultimate or Business versions had less of a security risk than the Home editions, but rather that by limiting virtualization to the pricier versions, ideally only more technically sophisticated people would make the move.

In any case, Monday's move will certainly be welcomed by enthusiasts, Mac users, and virtualization software vendors such as Parallels.

Microsoft group product manager Patrick O'Rourke said in a telephone interview Monday: "Now is the right time, we believe, to make it easier for technical enthusiasts...to experience and see if virtualization is right for them."

Read the entire CNET News article, here.