In an earlier posting I extolled the virtues ofusing the inbuilt Win7 virtual PC, XP Mode implementation as a way of managing the user space. This post serves to explain what XP mode offers.
Microsoft has included a free virtual machine, running Windows XP, for the Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate versions.
What is a Windows XP Mode? XP Mode is a way of allowing you to run multiple Windows environments from your Windows 7 desktop. It does this by using a Virtual Machine, which is, in fact, a copy of Windows XP running at the same time as Windows 7. This Windows XP looks, acts and feels exactly the same as does a copy Windows XP running on its own PC without Win7.
Why? This is done primarily in order to offer a way of supporting applications which run on XP but don’t run on Win7. This, in turn, means that you can continue running your old versions of software until such time as there is a good business reason to spend on upgrading.
A second and perhaps more important advantage, is that users can continue operating using the same comfortable screen look and feel. No new learning curve!
So why not just continue with Windows XP? The two most obvious answers are that new PC’s will be only supplied with Win7 and the other is that Microsoft is now only offering minimal support for Windows XP. By supplying XP Mode as part of Win7, one gets the best of both worlds; the choice of the XP or Win7 interfaces.
But wait, there’s more!
XP Mode integrates tightly with Win7 and apps installed on the XP machine are directly accessible from Win7. The apps can even be pinned to the start menu in the same way as any Win7 app! And you can choose which disk mappings are propagated from the Win7 PC to XP Mode, where the mappings can be used transparently, in addition to mappings unique to XP Mode. All of which provides huge opportunities for customization!
If you haven’t looked at Win7 yet, now’s the time to do it.
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