There is a lot of buzz on the windows 7 virtual XP embedding as it seems an unusual twist for compatibility problems. The opinions are varied, and here is my 50 cent.
There are 3 types of opinions:
- The positive ones, like in coding horror, where they see virtualization as a holy grail for solving compatibility problems.
- The negative ones, like inforworld that point out the inherent problems of virtual machines
- The balanced ones, like the Register that try to show both sides of the equation
In my opinion, the merit is not in the virtual solution as a virtual machine but in the way the actual problem is brushed away. Windows vista, and by extension windows 7, suffer from several problems: speed on low end hardware, large memory requirements, and compatibility problems with legacy software. This is already demonstrated in the reviews of windows 7 performance like PC World.
There are several reasons people go back to windows XP:
- Performance: XP is faster and leaner and the difference in speed is evident in games.
- Memory footprint: vista takes huge resources in disk and memory.
- Different conventions: vista changed how things are done, making the conversion not so straightforward.
All of these make the reasoning for adding XP to windows 7 a very peculiar choice as they don’t really address the problems of vista / windows 7. The choice is actually a demonstration of technology, to actually push the virtualization in a same fashion done with the explorer, but this time with a “reason”. From users perspective the virtualization does not give a speed or user friendliness advantage, but it does give Microsoft an answer to those requiring downgrade rights.
As a customer and engineer, the stunt from Microsoft is shady at best, because it does not really address the problem, it makes a heavy system heavier and increases the overall complexity. The twist here will be the impact on the market, being even les favorable with windows 7 than with vista.
Addenum:
After some digging in the market share of virtualization solutions, the reasoning became obvious. Its a marketing scheme to make people used to Microsoft virtualization solutions, and perhaps take a bite of VMware market share. via introducing a VM within windows 7, Microsoft can help IT promote Microsoft solutions and make it more visible. It does not actually serve the user due to the many limitations such a VM inherently has.
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Tags: 7, actually, choice, choice don't, compatibility, compatibility problems, explorer, memory, ones, problems, really, really address, speed, virtual, virtualization, vista, windows, windows 7, windows 7 peculiar, xp
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