VirtualDesktop offers you to navigate through all the popular operating systems from the bygone era. You can go through various versions of Windows and Mac. But these are not really anything similar to any virtual computing solutions offered by software such as VirtualBox or Vmplayer. In fact, VirtualDesktop offers you just the images captured of the operating systems along with web technologies so that you can browse an operating system as it looked years ago on a typical computer.
VirtualDesktop web app is where you can find Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows XP, Mac OS 8.6, Mac OS 9.2, Mac OS 10.2 and Mac OS 10.4 and browse through them easily. As you click on the shortcuts of these operating systems, it opens a new window simulating the booting of the operating system and presenting the usual desktop experience. But you cannot launch any application, change settings, use the web browser or run any commands. This is only for experiencing how the operating system looked.
Other than the operating systems, VirtualDesktop also offers some of the very popular applications from the past such as various versions of the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Safari, Apple Mail and more.
VirtualDesktop is not anything close to real virtualization. It is just collection of screenshots arranged in a way that allows you to experience the operating systems and application as if you are using them. Disadvantage of this is that you cannot really run any application or run any command like in VirtualBox virtualized operating system. But an advantage is that you can experience the operating systems right within your web browser.
The website also offers you to download the whole set of operating systems and all the applications so that you can run them from your local hard drive which makes the loading of all the images very fast. The whole set is only 80 MB and contains all the above mentioned versions of Windows, Mac OS as well as the applications.
You can browse the virtualized operating systems by VirtualDesktop at http://virtualdesktop.org.