I work for a large computer software company. As a corporate standard for laptop hardware, or company issues the Dell Latitude D620. For distribution of demonstration environments to our sales and service personnel, we use Microsoft Virtual PC. I recently installed the 2007 version of this software which introduces support for Intel VT virtualization technology. According to Intel, the Core Duo processor in the laptop supports this technology. I was quite distraught when Virtual PC informed me, however, that "Hardware-assisted virtualization is not available on this computer." I searched the BIOS options, but found no option to enable this processor feature.

 

Searching these forums, it would seem that in a rush to be the first to market with new processors, Dell has neglected to keep up in the BIOS department, and as a result has been releasing systems that do not take full advantage of newer processor features. While I understand Dell's position that on systems like the XPS, Virtualization support would not be a heavily utilized feature among that user base, the Latitude D620 is quite a different story.

 

Virtualization Technology is definitely a business oriented feature. Many large corporations have standardized on the Latitude D620. It is unacceptable that this support is missing. When will a new BIOS be made available that enables this support?

 

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