Windows 7 gets built in XP mode Microsoft is adding a "Windows XP Mode" to Windows 7, in a move to encourage users to make the switch to the software vendor's forthcoming operating system. The firm has built its XP mode into Windows 7 by using the Windows Virtual PC technology Microsoft acquired in 2003, to make the OS compatible to run apps designed for …
Is this version of XP *exactly* the same as the usual one. If not, MS have just increased my test matrix. Thanks for that. On the other hand, perhaps it is a virtualisation-friendly build, which *would* be nice.
Is it maintained through Windows Update on the host or on the client. The latter may *seem* more obvious, but unless it is permanently running I can foresee larger numbers of "unpatched" or "not patched often enough" copies of XP in the wild.
Can I cut and paste between the two machines? Does the client have access to all the hardware on the server.
If this is mostly aimed at big business, who probably already have XP licences, isn't it easier and safer for them to plonk a real copy of XP in a *known* VM host environment?
Is this an admission by Microsoft that they *can't* deliver a backwards compatible OS and still include useful new features? If so, is the closed source business model basically at the end of its useful life? Should the big corporates now intensify their investigations into Linux and WINE?
And finally, why have MS just thrown their customers into a state of confusion weeks before the launch? (It may not hit consumers for ages, but there's an RC hitting corporate admins almost immediately with, one presumes, the RTM in the next couple of months.) This is a stunning announcement.
It's faster, more reliable, you can copy, share, and play anything without microsoft telling you you can't.
Also, copying a big directory from one machine to another doesn't crash the network card.
That said, I've had vista for weeks now, and I no longer hate it. I loathe it instead.
What exactly is it doing when it's not being used? It has hours to lock the terminal, but for some reason it waits until I want to use it, then it takes 20 seconds.
Right maybe i read this wrong but i assumed they meant it a run the APPLICATIONS in a Virtualised environment not just run a xp vm on your windows 7 machine
you know like Xen App Streaming or microsoft V-app or VM wares product (VDI is it).
plus mickeysoft have done this or at least similar before with 95 they was a way of making command prompt act more like full dos (or was it in 98) as the cmd wouldn't run some apps without it. surely this is just the modern equivalent.
putting aside the compatiblity issues the machines i have used with vista have been pretty good the most annoying feature and biggest problem was the access control crap once i'd disabled it the machine worked ok (all right it was a brand new machine and the change in admin tools was annoying but once connected to the network it was fine)
it's only the compatibility issues that have prevented us from upgrading
(sorry to stop the microsoft hate fest)
VirtualBox is pretty good (seamless Windows, 3D Acceleration support...), but it's USB support is utterly appalling. Buggy, unstable and just not worth it. Fortunately the Fodler SHaring system is pretty good and that allows you to side-step the USB limitation to a great deal.
If you really, really need USB support then your best choice is VMWare. It's USB support seems to be very good.
OSX included the virtualised environment for legacy compatability, and it did the trick for the transition period until everything went Intel native.
This atually really great news for Windows. By virtualising everything made for XP and before, when Windows 8 arrives MS can strip out all 16/32bit legacy code and have a really quick and lean OS.
The Registers articles are getting less and less credible lately.
Well my XP never been that reliable. Better than 95/ME but there again it is hard to think of something that isnt. I dont need to reboot my Vista machine as frequently as I did my XP.
The networking issues including copying are gone as far as I can tell. Fixed in some update or another. I certainly no longer have problems (but i did originally).
UAC obviously needs to be turned off for the machine to be mildly useable but thats ok, its a 10 sec operation.
The one thing that does still annoy me with Vista is when it decides to do "something" with your disk. Ive turned off the fast search and indexing stuff. Yet periodically it it decides to molest my disk for 20mins...gggrrrrr
- The IT Shrew
"The pimply-faced linux fanbois who think that after writing a couple of VB6 applications they are programming demi-gods."
Seeing as how VB6 is a dead language (or, rather, it should be - horrid bag of shit that it is) that does not, nor has ever, run on Linux....why would Linux "fanbois" be going near it. They're going to be C++ hackers.
I do agree though, people you do not follow standards are a royal PITA. That goes for the lowliest programmer right up to the largest corporation (your spotty oik to MS).
I also feel your hard-coded path pain. Why do 95% of Windows software installers demand to use C: and want admin rights? *sigh*
<<<<<< The eternal fight >>>>>>
Side one: The Programmers (Everything is better now, forget the old crap ...)
....................vs.......................
Side two: The Users (I don't care about better, give me what I can work with ...)
Round 7, clear win to the users, hooray!
I have no sympathy for your 0 sympathy!
Clearly you've never worked in a production environment where you have PCs controlling machines, test equipment, PLCs, spectrometers, etc. I don't know about your company, but the one I deal with doesn't have $10K+ per machine to upgrade the software to versions that will run on something newer. Not to mention antique hardware like ISA cards. And if you can finagle it to work with something newer, guess what? The vendor no longer supports it because it isn't running on the "recommended platform"
I agree that you have to pull the plug sometime, but it just isn't practical to abruptly 'switch off' compatibility.
Now that companies now they will be able to use their existing solutions, they need to be convinced that upgrading is worth the price of new, faster computers...
Because that's the main problem of Microsoft: companies have found they can actually survive fine with an older OS.
Ok, revisionism again... I should say "an **unsupported** 8 year-old operating system"
You're right; age is no indicator of usefulness alone. But XP has been EOL'd. If the OS you're using has a roadmap and support plan going into the future, then that's fine. But running mission critical / niche software (the target audience we are told this is all about) that requires an OS which is classed as obsolete by the *vendor* is just plain dumb because, at worst, it means you are using dead software and if you come across a bug in the app you have no chance of getting it fixed, and at best even if the vendor is still around they are only going to able to fix bugs in the app itself. If they come up against a bug in the OS then you're screwed. Either way it's a bad idea.
Microsoft should come up with some compelling reasons for people to upgrade, and businesses shouldn't be expecting Microsoft to keep dragging their arse along in the 20th Century.
Oh, and I'll take your 21 year-old OS and raise you to 39 years. Little thing called Unix... last I heard it was running Mac OS... ;)
"If this is true, it's *extremely* dumb of Microsoft at a time when they are hoping to sell more units of Vista/Windows 7 than they did of XP."
Well, I'm just a scientist, not some business type, but this sounds like a smart move.
Who upgrades their OS, specially in the Windows world? You know, go to a store and buy a box and then do all the incantations? I don't know about enterprise, but in academia I can tell you: nobody. At home it is pretty much the same, I suspect. When the machine falls apart (or rather: is perceived to do so, when it's actually just Windows bit-rotting, but I digress), people buy a new machine. Which comes with Windows installed on it, unfortunately, and that isn't going to change anytime soon. So, there goes another Windows sale, as has been for a long time now. Then people use the thing (and complain that it looks a little different, blah, blah), and install their old programs on it. And if everything still runs, yay!, and the old OS is forgotten. If not, see Vista's history and its resulting reputation (regardless of it being deserved or not, which is another story). Same will go for developers, I think. The developing tools will be geared towards the new OS, so why not use them as they are, since the users are all adopting the new OS anyway, since it seems to work exactly as before?
So, if this works well and easily for the computer illiterate as well, it should be a success. Mucking as little as possible with the user interface always helps too, of course.
Or not.
We'd love to move on from WinXp and upgrade to windows 7 8 or 9 (what happens when it gets to windows 95?)
But theres the cost of replacing the legacy apps.
If Barcleys bank says that their credit/debit thingy used for transferring money from the company accounts to various employee accounts is only certified for WinXp, then we have to use WinXp, if our CAD/CAM software costing £20 000 is only certified for WinXp , then it has to use WinXp.
Or perhaps you'd prefer me to crash one of the £120 000 robots we use to manufacture bits because we decided to use the Xp version on a windows 7 box and it pumped out a subtle error in the CNC code we use.
As for software 'writers' saving data to the System directories and/or hard coding program directories..... they should be shot!
Linux...you know it makes more sense
is WinFS(?) and DX10. But MS wont make these available under XP which is more than capable of 'running' them. Seems a bit like having to get a new car cos the ashtrays full.
WinFS - oh goody another DB to loose data into - less people know about inner joins now than 10 years ago!
But companies dont want you playing games so theres no need for DX10 so no company with any brains is going to pay for W7 to do nothing useful for the company.
So its the end of the line for windows upgrades in business!
When you need to make it easy for field techs to backup software settings, an INI file saved in the programs's directory works quite well. Try to explain to a customer half way around the world or a field tech how to backup your specific branch of the registry. The registry is also very bloated in many computers which results in slow access. The INI files are also easy to edit if that becomes necessary.
I'm no Linux fanboy, but I'm using the Qt framework so I can switch if necessary. I only received the final Vista drivers needed to run our flagship product just a few weeks ago and am not very trusting in how our hardware will continue to perform on Win7/8. I'm tending to pick only vendors that support both Win/Linux just to be on the safe side.
Not that Linux doesn't have problems too. Almost every release breaks drivers due to low level kernel API changes, but the user level API has been fairly stable. And I'm not forced to move to a new version as often or troubled with activation or DRM.
My only question about building a VM Win XP into Win 7 is when will the EU decide this is bad for other VM vendors with similar offerings? Will the XP VM be added for free or be an extra cost item? And considering VMware has much better USB support, how about letting them shim their VM into Win 7 also? Would MS be willing to allow this?
I am enutsiastic about W7, where as I was like F@?k that with Vista. I am more concered about them keeping some Vista compatability - now that would be a waste or resorces and make the Vista mess up even more pain full.
Anyway, I consider the move possitive. I am mainly a gamer on my PC these days and knowing all/most of my games have a fighting chance of running on W7 suits me.
What intrests me, is does Windows 7 32 support XP64 compatabilty?, and like wise what about windows 7 64?, will it run XP32 an/or XP64 apps?
-P
Skull & Bones, because Yarrr me heartys :)
<<The reason some xp apps cant run under vista or 7 is the new code base doesnt allow for any app to run with admin privledges or any direct hardware access less ya go thru the HAL or directx, less its manually SU, many apps ASSume they have admin rights so install services or starts or stops them without going thru the proper api, or were taking shortcuts that vista or 7's security wont allow.>>
The funny thing about this is you just described NT4. Back when it was done properly. Then MS tried to merge the shitty 9x OS's into the code base and allow Win2K to support gaming, which necessitated allowing apps to interact more closely with hardware. And this is why I still have NT4 servers running. Other than USB support and the latest incarnation of NTFS MS has added pretty much nothing to the OS since 1995.
Anyone who has coded an app to require admin access since the days of NT4 is just full on incompetent. Yes, Quickbooks, I'm looking at you!
Years ago SCO Unixware had a mechanism called DOSMerge that allowed MS-DOS and, later, Win3.x to be run in a window on CDE. This developed to run Win95/98 and continues, after being sold off several times, as Win4Lin (win4lin.com) that will run XP on Linux (also a version for Solaris).
It can run a complete desktop in a window or individual applications in their own windows.
Rather than double your resource requirements with Win7 + WinXP just to run the same stuff you could run Ubuntu + Win4Lin + WinXP.
The one thing Microsoft should do as Apple does is constantly draw a line in the sand and say this will only work on something modern.
iLife '09 works only on newer hardware and if 10.6 is not Intel only then I expect 10.7 will be. The Intel transition was announced 2005.
This may also explain the higher priced second hand Apple market as people buy older computers to run old software such as architectural software.
Let's just run Windows XP natively, and run Windows 7 in an instance for those few things for which we'll actually need it. I had Win7 Beta running under VirtualBox on top of XP, runs fine.
It seems like the least needed OS should be the one virtualized, not the most needed.
If I'm understanding Microsoft's proposal the procedure would be, a company doesn't request the customary downgrade to XP when they buy new machines, they go ahead and take them pre-installed with Windows 7 and then run all their applications in a virtual instance of XP. Making Windows 7 the most bloated bare-metal virtualizer on planet earth.
Someone said: "the windows OS has a place for everything."
No it bloody well doesn't. Windows just vomits data all over your hard drive when you install it (or anything on it).
So MS is going to virtualise their very old, no longer supported OS Win XP using software they bought in but didn't invent or write themselves which will run on top of the new Win 7 which will have hefty hardware requirements in itself even before you fire up XP mode.
What if you need to run other virtual boxes as well? Or will you have to run multiple virtualisation packages to achieve this?
MS would have been better off years ago building a modern, lean and mean OS from scratch which could run virtual machines of your choice invisibly as needed. But given so much of Windows (and MS software generally) is a kludge of bits and pieces bought, borrowed or stolen then thrown together in a big pot and stirred incessantly to the point where they don't know where one piece of spaghetti code ends and the next begins, I can't say I have much confidence in MS achieving anything efficiently - let alone elegantly.
So how much overhead will this XP mode require on the hardware? Slow as treacle on a cold day on 'average' aka "Windows 7 Ready" hardware perhaps? This should be interesting to watch.
XP mode is beginning to sound like a big bag of hurt. Talk about strangling the baby at birth!
Evidently, the XP compatibility layer will not be included in the boxed Windows 7 product. Rather, it will only be available as a download and only to those who have purchased the ultimate version, which no doubt will be upwards of $400. It is hard to believe that such an approach will produce a tightly integrated, seemless experience. Plus, it stands to be glacial in terms of performance if you try and run it on a machine that lacks virtualization support in the CPU. And how much RAM, exactly, will such a machine need?
Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. If the betas are any indication, it appears to be a stable, nimble OS, but MS is about to ruin it. We already hear indications that there will be a netbook version (Windows for White Trash) designed to run on sub $300 machines which will be limited to running three applications at the same time. I can see MS counting TSRs as programs, thus nixing multitasking entirely. Now we hear about an XP compatibility layer. Ughh. MS had a chance to resurrect its business with Windows NT, truly a top to bottom creation that did away with DOS and promised a new approach. MS couldn't leave it alone, however, and insisted on porting and grafting a bunch of crap from the Win95 code base. Now see what we have.
Seems alot of peeps dont understand the virtualazation method being used here, it is NOT a Full XP Virt enviroment it is a per APP VIrt, meaning very minal resouces are needed for and its only used when you launch the app that requires it and then is shutdown when the indiv app is, if you launch 3 apps at the same time that require it then 3 seperate vitrs are setup one for each app, which still uses less resources than a full virt enviroment. concerns there would be USB access and network access depends on the setup we will have to see when its added. If done right shoudl be very good.
As far as windows 7 resource reqs without virt, im running it on a laptop with a single core 32bit chip and 1 gb ram, which vista crawled on l on and xp ran ok, 7 runs fine no real issues, the interface graphics wise is dumbed down as the onboard vid cant handle the full deal but other than that 0 issues.
There are always going to be haters that will spout off on any issue with no experience on the topic, and no undertanding of how things work. ignore the trolls, lol
My main system atm is running 5 OS's: Vista x64, 7 x64 and 3 diff flavours of linux . Vista is a good OS that got alot of bad press. due to OEM's wanting to cut corners and alot of vendors who dragged thier feet on drivers, ive never understood on blaming the OS vendor for hardware vendors lack of ability for programing drivers that work or on time, thats regardless of OS.
XP is an 8 year old OS let it die gracefully, the Per App virt is a way to allow that. good move.
@Eddie....Active Directory? Come on seriously? you think NT4 is worth sticking with?
@Stuart I think you'll be surprised if you actually use it. I'm running Windows 7 on a 2ghz Pentium-M and it's just as quick and responsive as XP. Vista didn't last 2 days on it.
I think MS are referring to virtualisation in the style of Xen or Hypervisor. It's not a large additional overhead, it's only virtualising the application, not a copy of XP for each and every old app you run.
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this just the same sort of thing as the 32bit emulator that the 64bit version of windows uses to transparantly wrap 32bit apps?
While a good idea it does have 1 minor drawback, it works so well that nobody develops 64bit software, unless they have a pressing need to address a large amount of RAM.
I don't know about you. But it's pretty obvious to me that Microsoft are suffering because they keep ignoring what the words Operating System traditionally meant.
All the stuff that makes XP better than Vista are down to its simplicity.
Paying again to get the same apps running (presumably slower and with a larger memory footprint) with a new boot screen is not really a winner for the customer.
If you are still using ini files you are as James says, a muppet. Join the fucking 21st century.
Idiots like you are why Vista has had so many problems with old apps. I bet you think admin access is a given right too.
It's perfectly possible for a field tech to edit the registry. Never heard of .reg files?
I agree. The problem is that it was *broken in the first place*. The registry or, if you really must, ini files in per user application directories works. Ini files in the program files directory was never supported but people did it regardless (possibly shitty ex Windows 3.1 coders, or crappy 'there's only one user in 95/98' assumptions. XP has been out since 2001. No excuse.)
Suddenly Vista arrives and starts enforcing the rules that should have been best practice for years. Don't whinge at Microsoft - it's not their fault (of course Microsoft also didn't follow best practice, which doesn't help either).
General users shouldn't be touching the registry - it is not designed to be a user accessible technology. Neither should users touch ini files. If you need to edit the registry/ini files, a programmer should be writing some code for you to change the value..
Same thing with administrator access. It's been best practice to run as user privilege in Windows for years, and in Unix 'forever'. The screw started turning a couple of years before Vista came out as certain sysadmins started locking down desktops and expecting things to still work. Shitty developers still ignored this and users whinged when Vista implemented an entirely reasonable block on admin activities by default.
People hate the UAC, but if you're not running sysadmin tasks and are running properly written software, it's rarely seen. Funny, that.
Sometimes it is necessary to 'break' things, because what they're doing should cause them to break. If you don't punish poor behaviour, it doesn't change.
This remind anyone else of OS/2 and its Windows 3 compatibility? Only this time, Microsoft is doing it to itself.
MS lost the way on Vista, from the get-go, because its primary beneficiaries were not the users, but MS itself, promising itself a full round of upgrade income, and "premium content providers", wasting gobs of resources on Trusted Computing and trying to create uncopyable data streams just to sooth the likes of the MPAA and RIAA. Which of the three pillars of Longhorn actually made it into Vista when the calendar said it was time to ship? Why the one that treats all users like copyright thieves, of course.
What's the big marketing slogan of Windows 7? Now! 40% Less Annoying!
"If your applications are so unstable..."
Actually they are quite stable. Millions of $ of product are processed by the programs every day. I just don't see the point of using a bloated registry that stores the data in a format that isn't easy to edit without the system running. Perhaps it's better than putting the data in a section of the WIN.INI file, and if I needed a tree structure I would possibly use it.
Have you ever run the System Internals Procmon program and taken a look at the amount of registry access going on in an idle Windows system? Many programs waste tons of CPU cycles reading the same registry keys over and over again.
"Idiots like you are why Vista has had so many problems with old apps. I bet you think admin access is a given right too."
Yes, my apps require admin rights due to several factors such as using real-time priority. They run critical machines and must do so 24/7. Yes, I could hack the local security settings, but it's just easier to run admin. Access to the machine is controlled so users can't muck it up.
Actually, the reason Vista has so much trouble with old apps is because a bunch of idiots wrote it! You can't add security to an insecure API without breaking old apps. You also can't clamp down too much or people will move on to something else that allows them to get the work done without the complications. Just say NO to UAC!
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I hate to say it but its programmers like you who are the reason for holding back advances.
You actually set your apps process prioty to realtime? lol
Ive been programing in various langs in multiple OSes including Linux and UNIX since the mid 80's, there is never an excuse to set process prioity that high on a permanant basis.
You remind me of programmers i met when nt 4.0 just came out and they were still trying to program for it as if its 3.51. "This is easier because i dont have to learn anything new"
You could double your efficiency by multi threading the app and not increasing the process priority and thats staying with 32bit not even to mention moving up to 64 bit could do. none of whcih requires admin access for the process.
Also as far as the registry, alot of programmers even for major houses dont follow proper practice, an app should only have to read the registry once copy the data to memory when it starts and only write to it if something has changed that they are storing there. Only a moron would program and app to poll the registry over and over unless the apps purpose is to monitior the registry for changes and thats only special purpose apps as it is often easier and more effecient to monitor process requests to add info to the registry instead.
There is 0 reason to have an app require admin acesss, natively. Thats completely undfefendable and only shows your lack of experience and training.
If for certain functions the app may need admin or higher or differnt user access(and alot of cases it may be needed like accessing a network resource that the current user doesnt normally have access to or for per session resouces and many others), then program the app to interface with the api and with user input to define the username and password required to access that resouce and of course encrypt the user data to prevent security issues or if using the full api is posible let the OS handle the request and the security, whch of course is the preferable way.
As far as the API least for the windows side, vista and 7 the api didnt chaneg at all, the functions have existed in the api since nt 4, just many amatuer programmers never looked at those functions as they didnt have to, it wasnt forced, now it is. it was of course extended to encompass the added capibility the OSes have over XP.
XP was heavily critized as a step backwards in security due to the fact all apps were run with admin, and that descion by MS is why XP is so ridden with spyware, malware virus vulnerablities, as any app can modify system files and directories. it was a throwback and combonation of the highly insecure 9x code base and the more secure nt4/2000 code base.
it also of course allowed the bad programming practices that were prevelant in windows 9x to continue.
Is MS to blame for allowing bad amaturish programming to continue of course they are. They shoudl have put thier foot down on this issue with xp and not waited 6 years to fix it (vista was relased in 2007), and this move with windows 7 is a way to mitigate the results of that failure, of letting programmers like you get away with this bs for all these years.
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