Alternatives to Hyper-V to run the Windows Phone emulator

Question

I recently bought a Windows 8 laptop just for the sake of developing Windows Phone Apps. Mine is not a Pro version hence Hyper-V does not run. (I realized that Hyper-V needs WinPro after I bought the laptop).

I am not capable of upgrading to pro edition. Can anyone please suggest me any alternatives to Hyper-V where my emulator can run? Thanks.

Answer 1

you can use a virtual machine to deploy windows phone 8 OS. My laptop processor does not support hyper-v so, I've installed win phone 8 on a virtual machine. I found this link helpful.. check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANk_XaovqM

Answer 2

You do not need an emulator to test your apps anymore. I don´t know exactly when Microsoft changed their limitations, but you can now register one phone to your Microsoft Account without a developer account. When you downloaded the wp8 sdk (Microsoft Download Center - it includes an express version of VS 2012), under "All Apps" on your Windows 8 laptop, there´s "Windows Phone Developer Registration".

See the prerequisites of a windows phone registration here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/ff769508%28v=vs.105%29.aspx

It must have been a short time they changed that, but I didn´t find an official statement about it...

I think they also changed the limitations on devices with that account: you could have registered up to five phones with a developer account, now those are only three.