Absolutely Brilliant, Windows XP Mode in 7

http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-windows-xp-mode-for-windows-7/

This certainly makes sense. I certainly suspected that Microsoft might go this route. There is no reason to be worried about compatibility, if this functions well. If the economy were not so down, I'd say this would be a real catalyst for Windows 7.

I wonder how Direct3D will work with this. Will I be able to playStar Wars Jedi Knight Dark Forces II?

"Will I be able to playStar Wars Jedi Knight Dark Forces II?"

Not if your GPU doesn't have a sufficient concentration of midichlorians in it.

I'm curious as to how this works w.r.t. the display system. I'm guessing the window display works similar to Parallels Fusion on the Mac? In which case does it mean that there will be no display driver virtualisation and instead rely on emulation, and in that case, which chipset does it emulate?

That sounds great.  I wonder how application virtualization is coming along and what if anything is in Windows7?  Install apps x and y with different service packs, different .Net versions and remove at any time without effecting anything else.

What an awful idea.

Necessity is the mother of innovation (or something like that), now all the hacks have an excuse for continued complacency.

phreaks said:

What an awful idea.

Necessity is the mother of innovation (or something like that), now all the hacks have an excuse for continued complacency.

does this mean that the most popular theme for windows ever (luna) will run in 7?

phreaks said:

What an awful idea.

Necessity is the mother of innovation (or something like that), now all the hacks have an excuse for continued complacency.

... And how many hacks can Microsoft remove from Windows as a result?

Greater good if you ask me. Particularly if Microsoft step up and remove several of the really old compatibility bits on Windows that very few users really take advantage of anymore.

I'm assuming this is meant to be Microsoft's answer to what Apple did with OS X. But what I struggle to understand is; alright so Microsoft have rolled out their virtual service but what have they removed? When OS X shipped they broke MOST OS 9 Applications and rewrote a lot of the framework, Microsoft has done none of that but released this virtual machine thingy.

Can we expect Windows 8 to be Microsoft's answer to OS X or aren't Microsoft ambious enough for that?

It'd be even better if it would be made to be:

A) Preinstalled by default
B) Available in all Windows 7 SKUs
C) Supporting not just Windows XP, but Win98SE, WinNT4, Win3.1, and DOS 6.22 (for basically complete compatibility with all PC software)
D) Completely transparent (use the compatibility index, age identifiers, etc)
E) Supported hardware graphics acceleration

Edit: And I realize that Virtual PC or VMware satisfies most of these, but then you still have to go through installing all these things, they're still not integrated that well (even in Unity mode).

This reads as if Windows 7's killer feature is the ability to emulate Windows XP.

Bass said:

This reads as if Windows 7's killer feature is the ability to emulate Windows XP.

Or the ability to be 100% compatibile with previous versions of Windows....

Amazing. I wonder how that'll work in practice. Also, weren't there a bunch of Softies here a year ago or something proclaiming that virtualizing XP was a terrible idea and that people were fools to suggest it?

Sounds like a great  feature. Too bad it isn't in the Home SKU. This'd be great for people who aren't very computer literate and don't have the luxury of calling tech support or simply buying new software.

Edit: wouldn't it be a funny dickish move if the leaked RC was intentionally leaked without this stuff in it, just to make people who downloaded and installed it download and install the RC that does contain it all over again?

From the screenshots, I see both XP and Windows 7 style windows run side by side, and XP running in a regular old Virtual PC window. I wonder wat limitations there are to just running XP Mode stuff in the Windows 7 desktops, seeing how they apparently also offer full Windows XP in a virtual machine.

And yeah, all the BC stuff can be stripped from Windows, but has it? Because I haven't head anyone running the beta say that their old stuff doesn't work anymore. What's the point of offering virtualisation for BC if all the BC code is still in there?

Its not an awful idea at all, but its just so 'meh' to me, its just virtual pc that comes with an edition of XP, boorrrring.. and I doubt this will be a common compat route for Windows.. just that XP is pretty different to Vista and 7.. but really, not that much? I can honestly say I've had like zero compat issues with software I use.. (where compat issues are breaking functionality).

Can you do this with "just Virtual PC that comes with XP"?



All the Virtual PC sessions I've had required me to run all my XP software on an XP desktop inside the Virtual PC window, not side by side with Vista/Windows 7 applications on my Vista/Windows 7 desktop... but I may have simply overlooked that Virtual PC feature all these years.

Bas said:

Can you do this with "just Virtual PC that comes with XP"?



All the Virtual PC sessions I've had required me to run all my XP software on an XP desktop inside the Virtual PC window, not side by side with Vista/Windows 7 applications on my Vista/Windows 7 desktop... but I may have simply overlooked that Virtual PC feature all these years.

No you cant but I don't see why that makes this so amazing really..