Microsoft rubberstamps Windows XP Mode Microsoft has put the finishing touches on Windows XP Mode, the virtual version of XP for those looking to run legacy applications after the switch to Windows 7. The final bits were released to manufacturing today, and the company says the tool will be available from Microsoft.com on October 22, the day Windows 7 officially …
For both small and large businesses if MS expects corporations to go to win7. a friend has a small business and all his software only runs on XP and NOT on vista. easy to say get different software or vendor...not so easy to do.
If only MS has gotten fista straight in the first place... sigh
yeah, you know why she's here
As someone who has had hands-on experience with porting intracacies between XP and Vista, it can be tricky. The firewall rules are different (big improvement), some of the network calls require modification (routing), and custom permissions may need to be written (PITA).
Of course, once it is all done it is just fine and dandy.
As an Apple fanboi, I will defend MS decision with one word....ROSETTA!
Don't start on Windows 7 when Snow Leopard had to have Rosetta made into a downloadable extra, a retro-emulator to allow it to run old PPC code! At least Windows only has one code base inside it's applications, us Apple lads have had to lug around two sets of binaries in every application to allow us to run apps on old and new hardware FFS!
If this helps Windows 7 take up, and makes it look daft to keep running legacy code, then good luck to MS, it will help them start to dump the old legacy code APIs and move forward with Windows. Good luck to them!
Let the flaming begin!!!
VirtualBox can do XP Mode today on more than just Windows 7, and without requiring hardware support.
It would be good for El Reg to compare and contrast the MS offering (Darth Vader's Federation) with VirtualBox (Luke Skywalker's Rebels), esp wrt performance and device capability ;-)
-FB
"..We expect many Windows XP applications to be compatible [with] Windows 7.."
I've put Win-7 RC on my old laptop (replacing XP Pro) and have found that Outlook 2000 will not send mail running under Win-7 RC. Great, it doesn't even run a Microsoft product correctly. (Maybe they want to force me to buy Office 2007?)
No problem, I've started using Thunderbird with the Lightning plug-in (for calendar and tasks) and that works just fine. I suppose the next stage would be to migrate to Open Office and then switch to some flavour of Linux before my Win-7 RC license expires in June 2010.
They could save themselves a lot of problems and have some happy customers by selling Win-XP licenses again.
Until that point, however, shouldn't xp mode handle the translation between the two? Output from x program on xp is passed as input y on Win7, offering an output identical in function as if the program were coded for Win7 natively?
Pie in the sky, I know, but you know... It might work by SP1.
That would be better, but MS has *no time* to make things like that work. They have to get something (anything) out to replace Vista which has been a disaster.
But, if you need WinXP programs to work, why would you upgrade to Win7 in the first place ? If licences are a problem, then just use a Linux machine that loads VirtualBox full screen...
so I have an easy way to run IE6, 7 and 8 on the same machine without the issues/complexities of currently doing so on vista or xp machines (anything for an easy life). Was hoping I might be able to load XP onto a spare PC I use as a NAS box and run XP within Win7 to mange the NAS box,but still not figured out if I can do that with XP mode...
"We expect many Windows XP applications to be compatible [with] Windows 7," reads a blog post from Microsoft, "however Windows XP Mode is meant to serve as an added safety net so small and mid-sized businesses can migrate and run Windows 7 without any road blocks."
Yeah, all the +100 apps that live on the networks I maintain and were manufactured before 2003 are surely classed as 'Windows XP applications'. Not.
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