Is it a big deal? I guess. There’s always weird apps that don’t run on versions of windows except those they were designed for (MATLAB7 not running on Vista caused my company endless headaches), so a complete virtualization solution would be nice, I guess. It’s one of the main reasons why I haven’t upgraded to Vista (and the code we licensed doesn’t run on any version of MATLAB except 7, huzzah).
Your average consumer won’t care, but your big companies (with their custom apps) will.
In defence of the low requirements comment - lower requirements is indicative (though of course not definite) that the OS is doing less. Whether this is good or bad depends on what your perception of how useful the things the OS is doing are, which range from indexing and malware scanning to desktop image compositing for transparency effects.
If you don’t want those things, then of course you are going to want the lower requirements. However I, and Microsoft certainly, are willing to bet that the vast majority of the users do want those things, whether they think they do or not, and so require higher requirements to reflect this. In this case lower requirements typically mean less features.
A gaming rig is atypical and you can’t compare the merit and worth of an OS for general use by those standards.
While I agree with the sentiment, there is nothing innovative or new here - Linux has shipped ‘an officially blessed virtualization solution’ for years, and you mention add-on Mac tools like VMWare without noticing it too has built-in virtualisation for older apps.
I just wonder if the virtualized XP will then get the same administrator rights warnings and run into a wall because the hosting Vista - i mean 7 - keeps a shadow copy of an important file.
Either XP is a loophole to 7’s security or it will be just as usable/unusable as the rest of the OS.
And at least to me usability was the main reason to stay away from Vista.
So i guess, if you want XP - a virtualized XP is no reason to buy 7 unless you’re ok with 7’s system management in general.
As someone else mentioned embedded virtualization was a very cool feature of OS/2 2.0.
Granted that was a long time ago. But it was powerful being able to create seamless windows running any MS-DOS/PC-DOS version or run any other real-mode operating system of its day. It eventually could run multiple copies and versions of Windows 3.x in virtual boxes when pre-emptive Multi-tasking didn’t exist for Windows.
We have far more powerful virtulization today, but reading the news release over the weekend made me think back . . .
And no, I don’t want to go back to those primitive days.
GASP Not only does he rock at coding but he’s an EVE Online player!!! EVE FTW! 
I just have to comment on The original system requirements for Windows XP are almost comically low, I think OS requirements should be low. Compare to Damn Small Linux, which only requires a 486DX (http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Minimum_Hardware_Requirements). I remember seeing Vistas requirements and thinking if the OS needs that much processing power to run, how much is left for my apps?
OSes should require as few resources as possible, so that all the power is reserved for applications.
If only it would run our games faster. Or at least at the same speed as XP. Give me that and I might upgrade. Make it faster and lots of gamers will want to update. But I don’t see it happening.
I prefer XP for usability reasons. The Windows 2000 interface (disabling the XP theme) combined with the XP explorer, XP control panel layout and XP start menu is my favoured environment for configuring the OS, simple file manipulation and starting applications. (Outside of that I mostly live in Cygwin rxvt terminals.)
It’s this interface, i.e. the GUI, that is the reason I haven’t switched to Vista and probably won’t switch to Win7. I’d love to get the Vista or Win7 kernels with the Windows 2000 interface and XP start menu + explorer. That would be my ideal OS.
The original system requirements for Windows XP are almost comically low:
Why is that a bad thing?
Do you really get a discernible difference when playing games under Win 7 from XP?
I might drop a couple (and I do mean 2) frames per second if I don’t have V-Sync on, and I don’t notice any drop at all with V-Sync. All speed loss when playing games that have been recorded have been minuscule for people who actually have a real gaming rig. Certainly not big enough to effect game play or perceived performance. Just because the numbers say it runs slower, doesn’t mean it make a blind bit of difference to you in reality.
It seems like this is a good opportunity to popularize the idea of a version of IE that runs in a VM and that always refuses to save state when you close it.
Want to run insecure ActiveX controls? Go right ahead! Visit spyware infecting sites? Go ahead! Visit a site that exploits IE and gains root access? Go ahead! When you’re done, everything magically disappears and your host is perfectly secure.
I have to imagine Microsoft is envisioning this scenario.
It’s been asked in every other comment I know, but, even so, it bears asking yet again - how in the flying fuck are low requirements are a bad thing?
Windows is more than a client OS
I knew I’d get a good laugh out of these comments if I just read for long enough.
@Barry Kelly
You know both Vista and 7 support the classic Start menu, have the classic layouts for the control panel, can disable Aero to get the Classic Theme. The only gripe I have about explorer in Vista/7 is that when you are viewing a network share or USB device it tends to lag a little, where in XP it just shoots right over to where you asked it.
-my 2 cents
After reading some of the comments here I can’t help but wonder when are people going to stop clutching onto an OS that is almost 10 years old and move on?
I am enjoying the nerd outrage over Jeff seemingly implying that low system requirements are a bad thing. He isn’t saying they are, just that they are ridiculously low in 2009, a time where a 1Ghz system is considered very low end. In the Win98 era, Windows 2000 used to be regarded as bloated. Then a year or two passed, and XP supposedly would never catch on because it was way too bloated. Oh yes, the sages at Slashdot insisted that this was MS’s final operating system and that the public would revolt and choose Linux and they’d finally have their day.
And, now, here we are insisting that XP is lean and mean by implication. How soon we forget. Note that most of these comparisons involve using Task Manager to measure free memory immediately after boot - which is flawed in several ways:
Anyway, sorry to ruin the party with those pesky things called facts…I’ll be going now.
It’s certainly a step in the right direction, although I’m a little disappointed by the limitations.
As I see it, it should be bundled and available for all versions of Windows 7, simply because full homogenity and availability makes it easier for everybody. I’m what you’d call a power user, but I’m not sure which version of Vista I’m running (I assume it’s Business, but I’d have to check). I’m certain my mom wouldn’t even know how to check.
Then again, I also think Windows 7 Starter should be a free download. As I see it, it would be very cheap for Microsoft to distribute (especially if also offer as a torrent) and it could limit Windows piracy and the proliferation of Linux on desktop. Windows 7 Starter is the very definition of a demo version, it should be free.
Well, actually Microsoft should charge whatever the distribution costs are, but it’s more expensive and far less convienient to charge $1 than to make it free.
As several people have said - Mac OS X has been doing this for years in various forms (first to let you run Mac OS 9 apps, then PPC apps, then Windows apps).
The real problem is that anything that needs access to your hardware sucks balls. Games don’t run well (if at all), audio software often fails miserably, etc. Now theoretically Microsoft can do a better job on this, but considering that the main reason many people still run XP (aside from the ridiculous price point for Vista Ultimate) is for the speed boost in gaming, I don’t have high hopes.
I think it’s a great idea - I think they should have done it years ago. But it’s not a new idea, and it has limits.
Ooh, will Raymond Chen be out of job? 