Virtualization / Hyper-V on the Aspire 8920

About a month ago, I bought the Aspire 8920 from Best Buy here in Canada. You can view the specs of my configuration of the 8920 here.

I absolutely LOVE the laptop. I love high resolution; I love the Blu-ray drive; I love the 4Gigs of Ram; I love the 2 hard drives which give me almost 3/4 of a terabyte. Acer even sent me an additional power adapter and additional battery for FREE (I think the agent I was talking to was just having a good day). Everything about this laptop is awesome! Except one thing...

My configuration comes with the T5750 processor. It turns out that the T5750 doesn't support Intel Virtualization Technology. I've been intending on installing Windows Server 2008 as my primary OS so that I can use Hyper-V (I've heard great things about it, but I haven't really touched it too much yet), but I just found out that you MUST have a processor that either has Intel VT or AMD-V or else Hyper-V will not work. Currently I use VMWare Workstation for my VMs but I can't have any 64-bit guest OSs because of the same problem... my processor doesn't have VT. Don't ask me why I didn't research all this stuff BEFORE buying my new laptop... I'm still kicking myself for that.

So... onto my question(s). There are some configurations of the 8920 that have processors that support Intel VT (ie. T7500, T9500, etc.). I want to, again, upgrade to a machine that has a processor that I need... but I love the Aspire 8920 too much so I think I'm just going to get one of those higher configurations. However, there is a little problem. Intel VT comes turned off by default. The only way for it to be turned on is in the BIOS. I've read in several forums that a few manufacturers are either forgetting to add this BIOS setting or just not doing it at all.

Question 1) To anyone reading this who has an Aspire 8920 with a processor that supports Intel VT ( Find out if your processor has VT support):
a) What processor do you have?
b) Do you know what configuration of the Aspire 8920 you have (ie. 8920-6671)?
c) Can you confirm if there is a "Virtualization" or "VT" setting in the BIOS?

Question 2) To anyone reading this that does a lot of virtualizing on their Aspire 8920:
a) What virtualization software are you using?
b) What guest OSs are you running and what are you using them for?
c) Do the VMs run well for you?

Question 3) Since were somewhat on the topic, is there anyone that has some experience with Hyper-V and virtualization under Windows Server 2008; and if so, what are you personal opinions on it compared to other virtualization solutions out there?

It's currently way past my bedtime so if I need to re-phrase any of these questions, please let me know. But I'm hoping there's a few people out there that can help me out... mainly confirming if the setting is in the BIOS.

I'm amazed if you made it down this far in this message, but if you did, I thank you for spending the time reading through this long post.

 

Is there really no one that can answer at least the BIOS question?

Man! I'm having such bad luck findin out such a simple thing!

 

Would it be possible for you to swap out the CPU instead of going with a whole new laptop?

 

Yes, it is possible, you only have to use a T7x00, T8x00 or T9x00 processor.

 

I thought about that option a while ago, but there's two issues with that.

a) I talked to Acer and they told me that if I change the processor in the laptop then it voids my warranty. I would prefer not to void a perfectly good warranty if I could avoid it.

b) As I mentioned in my first post, CPUs that support VT come with it turned off by default and VT can only be turned on in the BIOS (as far as I understand). The current configuration of my laptop doesn't have a processor that supports VT so obviously the setting to turn it on doesn't exist in the BIOS. If I upgrade to a processor that has VT support, I still have to be able to turn VT on in the BIOS, but the setting is not there, so I'll never be able to turn it on... thus defeating the purpose of upgrading.

However, does anyone have any suggestions regarding this? If it is possible for me to just upgrade the processor AND turn VT on, then I would much prefer that option than buying a whole new system (aside from the warranty issue, but I can live with that).

Thank you for your replies!