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MS, Intel "Goofed Up" Win 7 XP Virtualization

Posted by kdawson on from the one-man's-goof dept.

clang_jangle writes "Ars Technica has a short article up describing how Microsoft and Intel have 'goofed up' Windows 7's XP Mode by ensuring many PCs will not be able to use it. (And it won't be easy to figure out in advance if your PC is one of them.) Meanwhile, over at Infoworld, Redmond is criticized for having the 'right idea, wrong technology' with their latest compatibility scheme, and PC World says 'great idea, on paper.' With Windows 7 due to be released in 2010, and Redmond apparently eager to move on from XP, perhaps this is not really a 'goof' at all?"

5 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. by AndrewNeo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It surprised the heck out of me when I found I could run 64-bit guests on a (32-bit host OS, 64-bit hardware) with hardware virtualization, at least on my AMD.

  2. Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. by pegr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple did this, not once but twice. Why is Redmond so afraid of trading out the basic underpinnings? I guess they married the concept of permenant backwards compatibility when they used that very stick to beat OS/2 into the ground.

    Is Rosetta Stone a good technology? No, but it got users over the hump. (It was, however, a great hack...)
    How about Fat Binaries? Good lord, Win binaries are fat enough already!

    There's no good solution, so Redmond has to go with "good enough" to get users over to "the other side". Hey Bill! Maybe they don't want to go...

  3. Oh, it's a goof all right by localroger · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The only reason MS is putting this silly scheme into 7 is the large number of corporate interests who have apps that will not run on Vista or 7 natively, and which they do not want to rewrite. The virtual machine was supposed to get them to stop demanding XP from their vendors since there would be a solution. Only it might not be such a reliable solution, particularly on those millions of boxes which won't be quite new but also won't be quite old enough to discard which are in use today.

    This is a very critical problem for Microsoft. I have heard people who would never have even looked at a non-MS solution two years ago whispering about Macs and Ubuntu. If migrating is going to involve a vast amount of unscheduled pain, reinstallation, down time, and retraining, do you migrate to the next level of the company which is screwing you or look for an alternative?

    Seven has to solve the problem of legacy apps that don't run. If it doesn't, the Mexican standoff will continue with Seven in Vista's place, and one or two Fortune 100 shops throwing their hands in the air and switching FOSS could start a stampede. The unlikeliness of that, while high, decreases just a bit for every day the current situation persists.

    --
    Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
  4. Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. by digitalunity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be happy if Vista included virtualization technology for DOS6.2 on a 386. That would allow much smoother operation of very old programs that some of us still use, or want to use at least.

    --
    You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
  5. Re:2010? by postbigbang · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No, most people don't say the "three year rule". Where have you been?

    Microsoft's suffering revenue shortfalls because Vista was a bad idea. You'll see the tip in September, real McCoy in October. That's not 'late fall'.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.