Patent ID: 8572362

Claim:
A computing device comprising: one or more removable storage devices to store a plurality of different preinstalled operating system instances; and, hardware to support a plurality of logical partitions, each logical partition to be independently executed on the computing device, each logical partition is mapped to and uses one of the different preinstalled operating system instances, such that a given preinstalled operating system instance to which a given logical partition is mapped is used by the given logical partition without ever having to be installed on the given logical partition, wherein each different preinstalled operating system instance is one of: a different operating system as compared to an operating system of each other different preinstalled operating system instance; a different version of the operating system as compared to a version of the operating system of each other different preinstalled operating system instance; a different technology level of the version of the operating system as compared to a technology level of the version of the operating system of each other different preinstalled operating system instance; and, a different service pack of the version of the operating system as compared to a service pack of the version of the operating system of each other different preinstalled operating system instance.