On the eve of the Windows 7 release candidate, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 will include a fully licensed, virtualized copy of Windows XP:
Well, I’m sure happy that I’m running an operating system that’s basically… dead.
Dude, the only reason I run XP natively is games! I could care less about Vista or Windows 7 or virtualization. XP will run my games faster that any of these OS’s and with the right resolution and sound that I never have to worry about with the other OS’s.
Hello? OS/2? Is that you?
Even tho benchmarks from the last Windows 7 build shows some games running faster in Windows 7 than Windows XP.
Mitch = fail.
Would it be nice to have a small OS that let you run virtual machine on desktop? In the world of 1TB costing less than $100 and having 8 GB memory is common, I would love to run Windows, Mac OSX and Linux on the same box. Any you would not have to worry about the upgrade failing. You can just clone the vm disk image. I am really thinking about buying MacPro and running Windows Linux…
No, this isn’t an indication of a virtualized future – this is Microsoft using Apple’s idea from early versions of OS X, where you could run a virtualized copy of OS 9 in the OS.
it’s a small but important step forward
That’s HUGE news. It means that Microsoft, more than anyone, is freed from the backward compatibility yoke. This could give them a big competitive advantage and significantly speed up the development cycle for future versions of Windows.
Jeff, you have a Mac now? 
So XP is dead because it doesn’t demand enough hardware?
Wow, what a notion.
I am practically speechless.
XP will live on…
Good for Microsoft, but what about developers? If there are major architectural changes, I wonder if we’ll have to maintain multiple versions of software.
Hey Phillip - X-Fi under Vista, even with Creative ALchemy is still an issue for many games, including GRID, which I happen to play. Btw, show me the benchmarks or it never happened… And I will be more generous then you and spare you the insult back.
Is it that I am reading it wrong or misinterpreting it? Microsoft 7 is bundling virtual PC with XP over it and also provides the feature to add shortcuts from the virtual PC.
The applications running would still be running over XP and visualization provides all the compatibility. Where is the question with backward compatibility here?
With many projects (as far as my experience let me know) starting over from what was learned from past mistakes usually leads to better products, how often it can be heard that the new engine was totally rewritten. But with software as a OS the burden of past mistakes is mostly always carried. I think it is quite refreshing to hear that Windows is having the chance of some sort of clean slate to start over.
Will work great for a one time revamp - but may become trickier to manager every time they decide they need to rewrite the windows API removing any existing backwards compatibility. At least MS picked XP (I would have thought they could have used this as an excuse to ship more copies of Vista)
Sorry to burst your bubble but windows 7 does preform better than xp especially with more ram as since vista Microsoft added functionality that allows windows to use larger amounts of ram better, that coupled with windows 7 being so much more polished it ends out faster.
I feel XP is more of a Zombie or Vampire, or your choice of undead. Microsoft has been trying to kill it for years, but it’s still roaming the world, eating brains… mmm what I meant to say is most large enterprises and companies still use exclusively XP, I’ve yet to see a large company switch to Vista…
Besides XP is a rock solid undead by now, no way it’s going to die before the turn of the decade. Oh and all those little laptops that are all the rage nowadays are better with XP…
anyways you get the point…
So now I’ll have to keep up with critical updates in Win7 and also in the embedded XP VM? 
Well Mark, like I said to Phillip, show me the proof… I have Windows 7 Beta on a dual boot with XP and under the 4 games I regularly play, the performance is not even close, (yah with 4 gigs RAM, so what) and for 2 of the games, they are just unplayable due to sound glitches, freeze-ups, etc., = unplayable. Aside from Windows 7 driver issues, XP is proven for games - Windows 7 - not even released and you are saying it is better – r u and Phillip shills for MSFT?