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images/news/windows7.jpgIt could be Microsoft's most effective response to date to the issue of downward compatibility. But does this mean Windows XP lives on forever in your PC?
Since Microsoft's acquisition of SoftGrid application virtualization two years ago, the company's engineers have known that this technology could present an attractive and even preferable shortcut to the perennial problem of downward compatibility. If you set aside the problem of affordability for a moment, the other key reason businesses remain hesitant to adopt Windows Vista at present is because of the uncertainty that existing business applications will be seamlessly portable into the new environment.
This is much more of a problem for businesses than consumers, although a lot of the excitement around what Microsoft's calling "XP mode" in Windows 7 (whose first and probably only Release Candidate should be available to the general public tomorrow) came from everyday users who perceived the company's move as a nod toward the efficiencies of the past, as opposed to the planned obsolescence of the future. The fact is, businesses continue to invest in software up front with the expectation that it will pay off in the long term, depreciating it like an asset rather than supporting and nurturing it like a resource. And it is for those businesses that Microsoft must ensure that it facilitates and ensures the same general infrastructure over time.
So would everyday consumers have reason to use Windows 7's new Windows Virtual PC in XP Mode? Not typically. Consumer-grade software is usually updated with the moving target of Windows evolution in mind. But if those consumers are also businesspeople, and they're faced with a situation where they need to be able to run their office's software that was developed in the era before .NET, where resources were either built-in or dependent upon DLLs or OCX's (the version of DLLs originally built for Visual Basic) then Windows 7 gives those consumers a serious alternative to having to buy or use two computers. There are indeed many home office workers who have to maintain "the XP machine" separately, and who either cannot or aren't permitted to update those machines for fear of rendering obsolete the software upon which they depend.
Read on at Betanews
Since Microsoft's acquisition of SoftGrid application virtualization two years ago, the company's engineers have known that this technology could present an attractive and even preferable shortcut to the perennial problem of downward compatibility. If you set aside the problem of affordability for a moment, the other key reason businesses remain hesitant to adopt Windows Vista at present is because of the uncertainty that existing business applications will be seamlessly portable into the new environment.
This is much more of a problem for businesses than consumers, although a lot of the excitement around what Microsoft's calling "XP mode" in Windows 7 (whose first and probably only Release Candidate should be available to the general public tomorrow) came from everyday users who perceived the company's move as a nod toward the efficiencies of the past, as opposed to the planned obsolescence of the future. The fact is, businesses continue to invest in software up front with the expectation that it will pay off in the long term, depreciating it like an asset rather than supporting and nurturing it like a resource. And it is for those businesses that Microsoft must ensure that it facilitates and ensures the same general infrastructure over time.
So would everyday consumers have reason to use Windows 7's new Windows Virtual PC in XP Mode? Not typically. Consumer-grade software is usually updated with the moving target of Windows evolution in mind. But if those consumers are also businesspeople, and they're faced with a situation where they need to be able to run their office's software that was developed in the era before .NET, where resources were either built-in or dependent upon DLLs or OCX's (the version of DLLs originally built for Visual Basic) then Windows 7 gives those consumers a serious alternative to having to buy or use two computers. There are indeed many home office workers who have to maintain "the XP machine" separately, and who either cannot or aren't permitted to update those machines for fear of rendering obsolete the software upon which they depend.
Read on at Betanews
But no, I won't use VMWare, it's not all that bad, actually I was searching for an exuse to just try it out.
