Windows 7 "Windows XP Mode" Offers Backward Compatibility

Exciting news has been released about a feature that will likely be included in certain versions of Windows 7 called "Windows XP Mode" or "XPM". This feature standards to save business significant amounts of money upgrades and migration costs.

XP Mode is reported to be based on Microsoft Virtual PC 7 (VPC) technology, which provides a Virtual Machine (VM) of a licensed copy of Windows XP to run seamlessly within the Windows 7 desktop environment.

What this offers is a method to run applications that may not be fully compatible with the new Windows 7 environment by providing a virtualized environment that is essentially Windows XP. The application neither knows or cares that it's running in a VM "on top" of Windows 7. The virtual machine XPM technology takes care of providing resources to the application and allows the application to appear to run directly on the Windows 7 desktop. XPM is reported to even include entries in the Windows Start menu and other tools to make the XPM application appear even more seamless with the Windows 7 desktop. Users could, for example, run older versions of Internet Explorer alongside of Internet Explorer 8.

This strategy, which is based on technology available from Microsoft for a number of years, offers two primary benefits: first, it allows Microsoft to "move forward" with their operating system code base, potentially slimming the code down by elininating the requirement to support older functions, and most importantly for businesses and consumers, to reduce issues with supporting older legacy Windows applications.

XPM allows legacy applications to run side by side with newer applications, reducing the need to support two different desktop environments.

It is reported that XPM will not ship with the Windows 7 operating system, but instead be offered as a free download from Microsoft for owners of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

Via Paul Thurott's SuperSite for Windows

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Microsoft Announces Release of Windows 7 in 2009

Although the release of Windows 7 this year has been publicly discussed for quite a while, Microsoft officially announced on Monday that Windows 7 will be released in 2009. It is anticipated that release will occur in time for the operating system to be available for the coming holiday season. According to Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte, "a holiday release is accomplishable".

A Windows 7 pre-release version, referred to as a Release Candidate or "RC" of the operating system is still due to be released to developers in the July to August timeframe.

This is great news as Windows 7 is, in my opinion, is superior to Vista. Even early beta versions appear to be more stable and out-perform Vista. Many companies and consumers skipped upgrading to Vista and many even downgraded their systems to Windows XP. Many in the industry expressed that it felt like Vista was rushed out the door before it was finished. All in all, Windows 7 appears to be the "finished" version of Vista.

Via WindowsITPro

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