Techy item to follow so look away now if you're not into that sort of stuff.
Windows 7 is on the way. But what about backward compatibility? Well, Microsoft have a (long over-due) trick up their sleeve: Windows XP Mode (XPM) for Windows 7.
XPM consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7, but is considered an out-of-band update, like Windows Live Essentials.) XPM works much like today's Virtual PC products, but with one important exception: As with the enterprise-based MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) product, XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.) That way, users can run Windows XP-based applications (like IE 6) alongside Windows 7 applications under a single desktop.
Obviously, XPM has huge ramifications for Windows going forward. By removing the onus of legacy application compatibility from the OS, Microsoft can strip away deadwood technology from future versions of Windows at a speedier clip, because customers who need to run older applications can simply do so with XPM. For Windows 7 specifically, XPM is a huge convenience, especially for Microsoft's corporate customers, who can of course control XPM behavior via standard Microsoft administration and management technologies like Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP). And it significantly recasts the Windows 7 compatibility picture. Before, Microsoft could claim that Windows 7 would be at least as compatible as Windows Vista. Now, they can claim almost complete Windows XP compatibility, or almost 100 percent compatibility with all currently running Windows applications.
Now that has to be a good thing. Now where did I put those legacy apps...?
overyourhead - some irreverent musings by a gay London guy - crawling though technology, love and life... so you don't have to.
Didn't Apple pull off a similar major OS transition, but more elegantly, with OSX. There were no extra downloads or fiddling for legacy software users as I recall... ;-)
ReplyDeleteYes, and M$ did try this once before with their 'compatibility mode'. It mostly worked but not completely. I think this is drawing a line in the sand with a very large stick. Not very elegant - as you say.
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