The original system requirements for Windows XP are almost comically low
The original system requirements for XP are completely unusable in this modern world. I have an PC with triple those specifications and it’s too slow to be usable. Modern software is just that much more intensive and XP has scaled very well to it. Microsoft is just lucky that we need to go 64bit otherwise they might have been in the shadow of XP forever.
Unlike everyone else, I’m not falling all over with praise for Windows 7. I’m not saying it’s bad, I just don’t care. I just want to run my applications and I quite comfortable in my old XP shoe. Eventually I’ll need a few more megs of RAM and I’ll have to get Windows 7 and that will be that.
As Silas said above, Apple has been doing this for years. The virtualization future, as you call it, arrived eons ago. It’s just silly to tout this around as a novel concept. What’s ridiculous is that it’s taken Microsoft this along to wake up and smell the virtualization coffee. The end result has been an antiquated patchwork quilt of an OS that has already induced hordes of former Windows users to seek greener pastures.
I’m glad MS is finally seeing the light, but for many folks this is just too little, too late.
I seriously doubt we’ll see any change in the backward compatibility story in Windows. Windows is more than a client OS, and I just don’t expect that much divergence between server and client Windows builds. The big issue will be when Win Server no longer supports a WOW subsystem for 32-bit software.
I suspect this (XP Mode) is more of a sop to those dependent on desktop abandonware that won’t have the chance to ever be updated. The appcompat shims can do a lot, but filesystem and registry virtualization in particular are problems for some legacy software.
But why do this now? Isn’t Windows 7 basically a slightly improved version of Vista? Why not fix some of the real issues with Windows and implement that then (such as getting rid of the Registry). Will we end up with several of these virtualizations? Will Windows 8 run XP and Windows 7 for backwards compatibility?
I’m not convinced that this move will lead to better software in the future. Until now, there was no way to stay in business without updating your applications to the newest OS version. This step might lead to lazy updates or no updates at all. And - thinking on a bit - what will the windows world look like in ten years? Will we have a virtual version of virtually every windows since XP? Or do you just get another grace period of 2 years before your XP-and-not-Vista-compatible applications will finally die?
We’re still using XP at work. Why? Because practically none of those special programs required by our users work on Vista. The XP virtualization is a good move on Microsoft’s part.
This isn’t exactly a new idea to Microsoft. Hey, on Windows 7, will NTVDM be running inside the XP machine, so 16-bit apps run under virtual DOS in the virtual XP?
Because, whether XP is dead or not, I’m afraid many big companies, including one I currently work for, are still running 16-bit apps on their thousands of XP machines…
An OS is simply a platform to launch the apps I want.
Explain to me why I need Windows7 or XP over Win2K ?
Since Windows 7 comes on DVD, apparently they are trying to set a new record for bloat in laziness - need backward compatibility, eh we’ll just throw in a 600meg install routine for that, needing it’s own 2gb in hard disk space and 512mb of ram.
Explain to me why I need Windows7 or XP over Win2K ?
I can’t, because I don’t know what you’re going to do with your computer.
In the case of what I do - music production - XP64 is dead in terms of driver development, and I’d like more than 4 gb of internal memory so I can use big orchestral sample libraries.
Those 2 gb you complain about fit on a USB stick with a memory chip the size of my thumbnail. They won’t move anywhere once they’re installed, and they’re a blip on the radar of your 300 GB harddisk. It’s not even much on an 80 GB harddisk, which is right now the smallest/cheapest you can get (yes, there’s a few 40 GB ones left, but they cost more).
One of the greatest and most seamless virtualization products was nearly invisible: Apple’s Rosetta technology (a href=http://www.apple.com/rosetta/http://www.apple.com/rosetta//a), which allowed PPC binaries to be run on an Intel processor. This was the key to Apple’s transition to Intel, everyone’s investment was protected. The fact that there was a bunch of intricate technology under the covers making it happen was nicely hidden from end users. To this day I don’t know which of my old apps is PPC only, and which are Intel versions.
If Microsoft can perform the much easier trick of supporting all XP software under Windows 7, it will be huge for them. Worry about compatibilty of existing apps held off a lot of users from even trying Vista.
Is this the first time you’ve heard about virtualization? I know you back linked to something saying it isn’t but based on this post it seems like it is. How is this the virtualization future? This has been around for several years now, just because Microsoft is offering it as part of some licensing … wow … big deal. Are you going to start posting on every minor advancement in patent litigation now? As far as running an application in a windows form such as your screenshot, well that’s been around for awhile too.
As well, virtualization doesn’t really offer perfect backward compatibility at all, not once you get away from trivial examples. What if you have an application that does not run well in a virtualized environment or that needs to interact with many other applications? One writing tip I can offer is that just because you bold a statement like throws off the eternal yoke of backwards compatibility doesn’t make it true.
Again, as far as the real world is concerned, this is just a licensing change for something that has been a possibilty for a good while now. Maybe you’re just now seeing it; I guess its kind of neat. The reality is this solution is a bit clunky for average users, or average business users for that matter.
Another thing, I must say one thing that is much more comical than the minimum system requirements of Windows XP is for someone who is supposedly a programmer judging an operating system’s viability by it’s minimum system requirements. Honestly, that’s sort of stupid.
It will be neat if this will allow multiple XP images each tuned to a specific task because the biggest performance hit that I see with XP is the slowdown when lots of applications have been installed.
XP is good because it uses few(er) resources. We are stuck with 32bit machines at work (which means a max of around 3.2GB RAM), and as such, when running firefox, glassfish, netbeans, and various other tools I need for my job it runs slowly enough. I wouldn’t entertain running Vista.
And with the upsurge of interest in Netbooks, XP is an ideal OS for windows users - it would be insanity to put (=) Vista on it. In fact I run Fedora Linux on my Netbook because it is less resource hungry than XP.
I’m not convinced old API’s will be removed from windows the reason being this will still mean programs moving from running natively in windows 7 to having to be virtualized in windows 8 or later.
I suppose if the virtualization was completely invisible to the user then yes but currently I assume you have to do something like go to properties on the shortcut and tick run in virtual xp mode or something. I know lots of users that would never work this out.
