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Windows 7 To Include "Windows XP Mode"
Z80xxc! writes "Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite reports that Windows 7 will include a built-in virtual machine with a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3. The VM runs in a modified version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself. While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers. Microsoft confirmed the feature last night."
The only way they'll convince people to switch to Windows 7 is to bundle it with XP!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
When do you think VM images will outnumber disk images on the pirate sites?
XP! Pre configured, fully loaded with apps, fully patched, and pre hacked. Please seed!
Yet who is more likely to have old applications or hardware that will need XP? If you have the latest and greatest full bells and whistles OS, you probably have the latest version of your apps as well. Once again, MS misses the boat.
It seems that it's you who is missing the boat. This is a very good move on MS' part for companies that have custom apps that are known to run properly on XP. Rather than having to go through extensive testing to ensure they run properly on Windows 7, they can instead be run in this VM. It's a move to make companies feel more at-ease in their transitions to Windows 7.
I have had a Windows XP Professional running in VMware on my MacBook and my Vista 64-bit desktop from the beginning. It solves a lot of problems with some quirky legacy apps I have to run.
And thanks to the USB support, I can also use:
1) Very old USB scanner with XP 32-bit drivers. I use it a few times a year for digitalizing reciepts etc., and I really don't want to pay for a new one.
2) Random gadgets with stupid software and buggy drivers.
Getting this free with Windows 7 would really rock.
Dvorak on Doomtech
When a company says "we're no longer going to support Windows 3x or Win9x, they should MEAN IT. NO support for the software.
They'd have to be insane to do that. Only an insane OS vendor would get incompatible with the largest collection of software in the history of computing.
It's an interesting decision. By implementing an easy-to-use VM for legacy software they're able to stick to their policies (maintain support for all legacy Win32 software) and on the other hand restructure their operating system with new knowledge. Each time I see news on Windows 7 I can't help but wondering if Microsoft has finally seen the light. There might be hope still!
Yet who is more likely to have old applications or hardware that will need XP? If you have the latest and greatest full bells and whistles OS, you probably have the latest version of your apps as well. Once again, MS misses the boat.
It seems that it's you who is missing the boat. This is a very good move on MS' part for companies that have custom apps that are known to run properly on XP. Rather than having to go through extensive testing to ensure they run properly on Windows 7, they can instead be run in this VM. It's a move to make companies feel more at-ease in their transitions to Windows 7.
Except that this is pure PHB-bait -- IT professionals are going to realize pretty quick that all their apps are going to require testing to ensure they can be run in this VM, just like if they were being tested for Windows 7.
The only ones who are going to go "hey, neat, free XP" are the C?Os that don't quite understand technology anymore and the consumers who don't really need this feature, anyway.
-1 Clueless
Do you honestly believe that it's to cater for the needs of home users that XP is still around?
Home users aren't the ones causing Microsoft to worry about the adoption of Windows 7. Most home users don't even pay much attention to the operating system. They'll use whatever comes with the Dell they got, as long as it allows them to surf the web, write the occasional document in Word and load music to their iPod - things that work well on Vista.
Enterprises however, who hold several million worth of internally developed business critical software - code that relies on all the cracks and crooked ends of XP; these are the ones causing sleepless nights at Redmond.
My fear is that once they have provided for running legacy software in a VM, they will feel free to move on towards their ultimate goal - an OS that will no longer run native code. They will come out with an OS that only runs .NET managed code, and thereby exercise total control over what you can ultimately run on the platform. It will be a form of "Trusted Computing" in disguise. Only specially certified "Microsoft Partners" will be allowed special access to develop the libraries underlying .NET, and the rest of us will be shut out. Microsoft will excercise absolute control over what can be run on their OS and thereby gain enormous powers far beyond what they have today.
I suppose MS's reasoning is, that all computers in a company should have windows 7 and use this compatibility feature to run XP only programs, instead of having some real windows XP computers, adding this feature helps remove an excuse for not installing Win 7 (in the eyes of Microsoft, not my own opinion).
I still don't see the reason for the complaint though, I mean, what do you want them to do? NOT include this feature? Make the feature work on crappy computers? In the future all CPU's will have hardware virtualization anyway, we're talking about a future OS on future computers here, non power users of the near future will have a CPU that is more powerful than a CPU of today and with hardware virtualization.
And also, don't power users use "Professional" versions of Windows anyway, instead of "Home" versions? The "Home" versions are the versions for the users that just browse internet and put photo's on their HD (and then losing them because they don't back them up and don't put them on a separate partition of their disk and will let someone format their HD to install a new windows after a virus infection anyway).
Where's the "+1 Paranoid" mod?
Base 13 FTW!
So... the people who decide what technology and software gets purchased? Wow, you're right, MS is really missing the boat here!
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I should be surprised this got modded up, but it *is* on /.
Linux, as a kernel, does not AFAIK run significantly faster on equivalent hardware vs. NT. Some of the userspace certainly does, but some is also a lot slower - searches always take longer even though there's a lot less installed on my Linux partition (I keep it pretty clean), and without superfetch it feels that applications like WarCraft 3 (in Wine) or even Firefox take ages to start.
Viruses are a wild goose chase - they have existed since before Windows, and they will probably exist long after unless there's a drastic change in the fundamental capabilities of computers (i.e. mor ethan just an apprximate Turing machine). Security holes do still exist for *nix applicaitons and even kernels - for better or worse, I get more security patches per month on Linux than I ever do on Windows, although only occasionally are they at kernel or base library level - but even if malware authors can't xploit those, they'll fall back to the standard approach that has worked so well against Windows (itself a rather hard target these days) for the past few years: the user. There is absolutely nothing in *nix security that can protect against the dancing bunnies problem, especially if that user can get root access (although lots of damage can be done even without).
As for things you can do on Windows that you can't on Wine: well, try Exchange for starters. No other groupware solution has yet come close to the integration, feature set, and market deployment levels. Office 2007 is another; OO.o is an impressive project but they're still far behind in a number of areas (although Office 2008 does run on Mac, so that might not count). Then there are the games (wine is doing wonders here, but new stuff that doesn't work right is coming out all the time too), the Windows-only drivers (my modem *still* doesn't work in Linux, nor does the WiFi on one of my older laptops), and all the thousands of custom-written programs, only ever tested on their target machines, that businesses and other organizations have been creating for the last decade or so to run on Windows. Oh, you might also want to look at power management; with the proprietary nVidia driver (since the FOSS one is nowhere near ready yet), suspend-to-RAM in Linux quite simply does not work (on my current system, or the last two before it). This is, to put it mildly, a problem on a laptop.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...