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Windows 7's Virtual XP Mode a Support Nightmare?
CWmike writes "Microsoft's decision to let Windows 7 users run Windows XP applications in a virtual machine may have been necessary to convince people to upgrade, but it could also create support nightmares, analysts said today. Gartner analyst Michael Silver outlines the downsides. 'You'll have to support two versions of Windows,' he said. 'Each needs to be secured, antivirused, firewalled and patched. If a company has 10,000 PCs, that's 20,000 instances of Windows.' The other big problem Silver foresees: Making sure the software they run is compatible with Windows 7. 'This is a great Band-Aid, but companies need to heal their applications,' Silver said. 'They'll be doing themselves a disservice if, because of XPM, they're not making sure that all their apps support Windows 7.'"
...but didn't Apple successfully pull this off twice?
stop posting troll articles!! :@
This is exactly what we want them to do. Virtualize the deprecated, old stuff, and get it out of the main operating system. Move on from the cruft of yore and build in some sweet new fundamentals that break backwards compatibility. We've been crying for them to do this for forever, so let's encourage it. It might add a bit of a support burden, but if it gives us a better product overall, what's the big deal?
The need for a separate antivirus makes sense because the virtual machine is running a different operating environment with susceptibility to different viruses. A separate firewall does indeed seem superfluous.
I think overall, this is a better way of moving forward. Windows has been essentially crippled from several different perspectives for years because of their need to support backward-compatibility, even with broken interfaces or insecure models. Letting a significant portion of that flow into VMs of older operating systems for those customers who absolutely, positively can not get off their old apps is a good compromise. It allows them to start with a cleaner slate for the majority who has no such requirements.
I'm 100% sure that a competent IT dept that has no use for this feature will, unsurprisingly, NOT USE IT, saving themselves all the support hassles entirely.
And for those that DO need this feature, they know there's basically no other way and it's worth the extra support hassle because they know they will have people saying Application XYZ MUST work I don't care how.
I suspect this means that the old applications that have to work and only currently work on XP can now be moved forward and the IT dept can get everyone onto Windows 7. Once there, the devs of these applications will have Windows 7 rather than XP to test against/run with and they'll have an incentive to update their programs to just work on Windows 7 because, like Classic on Mac OS X, this mode will have just enough 'impedience' that programs will be updated to work on Windows 7 native; but they will work okay in the meantime.
That's the thing - this isn't seamless. It's going to be a little tricky to set up applications to run in the XP box rather than natively on Windows 7, even if launching them is easy.
The trick is "Just enough impedience to get people to update to 7 native while providing a path."
I see no reason for a second AV program, providing the VM's virtual drive is readable by the host operating system. If any kind of nasty program gets installed, it's going to have hit the file system at some point, and if the host's AV can plug in to that file system, it can suspend or terminate the VM.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
How stupid are these people?
Windows alreadys supports multiple OSes, from the Win16 and DOS subsystems to the BSD/UNIX subsystem, and also the Win32 and Win64 subsystem.
Which all have their own kernels, and run in NT OS subsystems.
So adding in a VM'd version of XP is going to add to 'support'? How?
The updates still come from MS Update, it isn't like the in house people are writing the patches themselves.
If anything this creates more work for MS, not a freaking IT department.
I'm not sure where to even begin with how stupid this sounds...
More tech support? Really?
If an IT department isn't using group policies and the business centralization and integration technologies of Windows, they shouldn't be using Windows and instead move to something that has almost no central control or mangement like Linux or OS X.
The hallmark of why business CONTINUES to choose Windows deployments is the ease and control that MS continues to give IT administrators, along with their centralized server management concepts that really do make anything else out there look foolish.
A well deployed Windows server/client environment is peanuts to administer, even when the IT people shove Firefox on users and have to run around and do 'manual' updates because Firefox is 'retarded' about allowing remote or admin level updates without giving your users administrator rights.
The second part of this is not understanding the virtualization technology being used. They assume it is like a 'free window' VMWare mode.
It isn't, it somewhere better a VM and a Subsystem on the NT architecture, which is one thing that makes HyperV as powerful as it is.
Truly people forget that NT is a user mode OS-less architecture, and that everything anyone sees is a 'virtual' subsystem, even Win32 has its own kernel and doesn't really know that NT is running under it.
Ok, I'll let people go grab the facts on this crap themselves, and give Win7 a week or two i people's hands that actually 'do' know what they are talking about...
PS The XP Virtualization is mainly for corporate clients, as 99.9% of all software works on Vista and Win7.
It is only the in house written or 'corporate' written software crap that has no concept of NT security that has problems with Vista or possibly Win7 that enforces the 20yr old NT security model that the software developers should have written for in the first freaking place.
That's because making a living off Window's security deficiencies is for all intents and purpose the same thing as making a living off Computer security deficiencies. Sure, there are aspects of the Windows security model that downright suck. But the reality is every system has security vulnerabilities out the ass. Whether Windows or Linux or BSD or what have you has more is up for debate, but the definite thing is that security is an active, evolving process, and whatever OS is used by the majority of the world is going to be under constant attack.
I suppose if builders didn't build houses so damn easy to get into, we wouldn't need locks (and thus lock makers), and alarms, and cops and security guards, and fences, and a neighborhood watch. After all, the home builder made the house, he should guarantee it in perpetuity as an impenetrable fortress. Even if the owner ignores his recommendations, and leaves the doors unlocked and the windows open, it should still be secure. And despite the need for security, it must still be convenient for the owner and guests to enter and exit at will, pleasant to look at, and maintainable by an owner who has no knowledge of experience in houses.
You act as if security is easy, and MS could accomplish it if only it tried a little harder. That's not the reality. MS deserves flack for any number of legitimate grievances. They took way to long to take security seriously (basically the entire time from XP's release to Vista was spent making massive security improvements to catch up to where they should have been), they use abusive business practices to encourage lock-in. They make bizarre and frankly retarded attempts at anti-piracy like activation/genuine advantage (if there ever was a drm measure that does nothing to even slow pirates down, and annoys the crap out of legit purchasers, its Windows Activation).
But acting like MS and MS alone must bear the burden for ensuring the security of pc's, is ridiculous.
Just for the record, I've used Vista at work since it was released (doing .Net development and Database work on SQL Server).
Before SP1 was released, it was a pain in the ass. Since then... not so much.
In fact, I'm now used to Vista, and like it's extra features and perks, and find going back to XP annoying. I miss too much (the instant search everywhere, for starters, the snipping tool for another, I could go on and on) when I'm forced to use XP. And XP is so much less secure than Vista. Vista has proven to be remarkably stable and I haven't had ANY issues with viruses or trojans (not so, every XP install I've had over the same time period). It performs well, but of course I do have 4GB of memory, and wouldn't dream of saying anyone run Vista on less than 2GB.
The trash-talking of Vista is, at this point, mostly habit based on old info. It's ridiculous. ANYTHING that will help get people off XP and onto the newer more secure OS's (hopefully Win7) is a GOOD THING.
Hopefully most people won't need to use this new virtual XP VM in a regular way, in perpetuity. It can be and should be used as solely a stepping stone to get people on Win 7 and off XP, giving time for any software that refuses to run on Win7 to be updated or replaced. Mostly, the "XP Compatibility Mode" works well. For those apps that are just so badly written and so insecure and obsolete that they can't run even under that, this new XP VM provides a solution.
Of course, if software had been written correctly in the first place, then it'd run on Win7 correctly without issue.
Of course, one of the more laughable things is that SQL Server 2000, Microsoft's own product, won't run on Vista or Win7. Of course, it's a crappy database and nobody should be using it at this point... but there you go :-)
- Spryguy
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