I just stumbled yesterday into a very interesting FREE application. It’s called SVS and it’s from Altiris (recently acquired by Symantec). It qualifies easily as a “LITTLE GEM” to me and I adopted it at once.
SVS stands for “Software Virtualization Solution”. Basically, it allows you to install and run most top-level applications into a virtual sandbox on top of your actual operating system. A very small driver (less than 1Meg RAM) filters all I/O to files and registry keys from specified applications and redirects them to the sandbox. It allows you to install and run almost any application, or *different versions* of the same application (ex: Excel 2000, 2003 and 2007 in different languages), allows it to interact with other applications, but when you don’t need that application anymore, a click of the mouse and the application is “deactivated”, which means not a single trace left in your OS registry and file system!
The application is FREE FOR PERSONAL USE. The commercial application has a server-side that allows share and control of pre-packaged layers (*.VSA). For large companies, that means no need to install applications anymore!
Now the links.
A nice video showing how SVS works: here…
Download free SVS here or here.
Download free required Register Key here…
SVS community info here with lots of info and tweaks: here
Commercial info here (if you are interesting using SVS as a large trouble-free deployment solution): here
PS You can still download it at Download.com here…