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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."
Altho I call it Kubuntu with XP running in QEMU....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
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.
if it will run XP mode software, wouldn't that mean XP style viruses now have a key right into the system?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
No it is just a file requester that says "Are you sure you want to do this? Confirm or deny" over and over...
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.
... one of the drawbacks of the WIndows platform - from an development and engineering point of view - is that it's backwards compatible all the way back to (if I'm not mistaken) Windows 1.0. That's an insane codebase to be dealing with. By bundling an XP VM with Win7, they can- for the first time - take the backwards compatibility crap out of Windows and concentrate on providing a stable OS.
Isn't that essentially what Apple did with the transition from 68000 series chips to PowerPC, from OS 9.x to OS 10, and then again from Power PC to Intel?
I've believed this was a necessity for quite a while.
D
http://www.bistolas.net
I think companies are more likely to depend on old software that runs only on XP. So they target the correct users indeed.
Most non-corporate users only use programs to browse the tubes, print documents, send email and view photo's, nothing that depends on XP :)
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
Unfortunately, while this is a long overdue solution that other companies have used fine before, but it's going to prove problematic for Microsoft. Things that won't work (and Joe User will try to do anyway):
1.) Install their XP-compatible Antivirus program. "It said on the Windows 7 box that I could run old programs!"
2.) Install a printer which works on XP only. "The printer box said it works on Windows. Why can I only print from some programs (the older ones seem to work)?"
3.) Play an old game at reasonable speed. "I installed Super Hardware Killer Shooter for Windows XP and the 3D is running really slow!"
Virtualization is a great thing. I use it work all the time and love it. The public doesn't quite "get it" yet. They're going to see some things work, some things not and wonder why the hell that is. It happened when Apple moved to OS X, but the user base was much smaller so the complaints were less.
Until someone creates a hypervisor which is presented in a completely transparent way to the OS, in that things difficult to virtualize (e.g. video card hardware) run at normal speeds, it's just going to appear to the user "every time I run an old program, either it's too slow or it doesn't work".
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.
So does this mean M$ will be extending the fully supported period for XP again, as it will be shipping with W7?
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
By "confirmed the feature last night", did you mean:
"confirmed their intention to include an interesting feature, which in all likelihood will be dropped in the last quarter before release because other issues critical to the fundamental infrastructure of the OS have been discovered and will require 110% of effort in order to result in an acceptable basic release?"
I've been trying to learn Spanish lately - my corpspeak is seeming pretty fluent.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
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.
This would be great if Microsoft included a friendly P2V tool like platespin or vconverter. Then when people buy a new PC, it becomes short work to P2V their old XP system into a VM sitting inside their new system. A lot of people hate to upgrade for fear of losing their old files and settings.
I think companies are more likely to depend on old software that runs only on XP. So they target the correct users indeed.
Most non-corporate users only use programs to browse the tubes, print documents, send email and view photo's, nothing that depends on XP :)
Do not forget gamers/power users. I loathe the fact that I need a killer machine, to run a killer OS, to run Call of duty about at the same Frame per second rate as my old machine, with a few bells and whistles involved that I do not care particularly about.I'd end up paying 1.000 bucks on hardware, 250 on OS, and 50 on the game just to stay where I am now.
One other consideration is that these strategy of enabling XPsp3 in windows 7 will surely put some noses out of joint, plus leaving the door open for interesting legal questions. Imagine this scenario: in an all win XP sp3 outfit, the company buys half a dozen copies of win7. are these particular associated copies of XP officially supported while all the legacy copies aren't?
Remember: if a company has a particular, mission critical application that runs in XP, and this application is "good enough/fast enough" as is, the requirement of the company is "cheap xp machines with xp installed", NOT "rich win 7 machines with win7 plus a virtual machine with XP", if only because cost of hardware goes up. Given the low price of entry level hardware these days, the OS is representing a bigger slice of the pie than previously, so pressure there is higher. I would not be surprised if somebody did a "spoiling attack" claiming that all this design is a win7 tax and demanding to be able to buy legitimate XP copies....at old win xp prices.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
-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.
I know a few people who are really well connected in Fortune 500 IT circles, and they tell me to a man that *NOBODY* is planning to move to Vista or 7 (by which they mean *NOBODY* running a very large corporate IT enterprise). They tend to have corporate security models including stations locked down in various ways that work, deployment models that work, drive reimaging procedures that work, standard desktops and toolsets that work, and legacy code that works, much of which DOESN'T work in Vista or 7. This is the reason you can still get an XP box -- MS keeps raising the bar for it, but corporate just keeps paying the freight. So this is MS next move, to try to slide these guys into 7 by letting them virtualize their XP model.
The problem is that while this will solve some of the IT guys' problems (legacy apps, desktops, maybe security model) it will not solve what is probably the most important problem to some of them, deployment and drive reimaging. Also depending on how easy it is to break out of the emulation sandbox, they may not be happy with the security model either. When you are talking about pretty much rebuilding a network with 100,000 machines, paying an extra couple of hundred in blackmail per box for MS to let you keep using what you know works makes a lot more sense than jumping off into the void. MS may overcome some of the corporate reluctance with this ploy, particularly at smaller companies, but I don't think it's going to crack the egg they need to crack.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The U.S. Military is heavily invested in several applications that have been tested at Microsoft. (Military members do have offices in Redmond for this purpose.) Windows 7 was shown to have some issues. The USN scrapped plans to move to Vista, planned for this quarter, and decided to wait for Windows 7, but needed XP compatibility. The VM compromise was brewed up.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Apple called from the year 2000 and wants their legacy transition strategy back... but hey it did work, so I say go for it Microsoft.
BTW virtualization need not be in a window. When Apple provided OS 9 aka "Classic" support they didn't make the apps second class citizens in any way relevant to getting work done. Sure they were running in emulated mode and were not as fast as they could be but they had access to all peripherals, etc.
Modern virtualization allows for way better performance, full access to all hardware and as importantly can still be sandboxed.
They should hide all the virtualization aspects though and just let the apps open like they are regular apps with maybe a title bar note saying "(Windows XP) or something so there is a clue when an app gets updated to full native capabilities (the note will go away.
When Mac OS did this transition it was actually quite exciting (though also frustrating) as I would be on the look-out for the OSX native version of some software to come out.... then we got to do it again when the Intel binaries came out...
Anyways, if Microsoft does it right it will be transparent and will allow them to finally do away with the legacy support roadmap. This XP virtual mode will be there as long as it takes for companies to move their apps over to 64 bit Windows 7/8 whatever compatibility.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
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).
In many cases (especially if virtualization is used):
:).
root in virtual machine + bug in your CPU and/or bug in vm software = root in host machine.
Apparently there is an exploitable bug in intel processors. The "offsets" for the exploit might change depending on the motherboard you are using. So you better not be using a popular motherboard
Rubbish, my PC (built for the equivalent of about $500 (over 2 years ago - granted I upgraded the GPU last year but that would have only added another $100 after replacing the old one) and it runs Vista perfectly fine including all the latest games.
This whole thing about having to spend a fortune on hardware for vista is BS. You do NOT need to a 'killer' machine to run a 'killer' OS as you so put it.
Granted it took a while for the graphics drivers for games to mature properly to the point of being similar to XP, but that happened a while ago, and on any modern (and not necessarily expensive PC), the performance difference will be minimal between Vista/7 and XP.
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...