Virtualized Windows XP coming to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate users

Color us intrigued. The gang at SuperSite for Windows have revealed what they know about a pretty awesome Windows 7 feature: XP Mode, a virtualized copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3. It'll reportedly be a free download for Professional and Ultimate Edition users, a shame it won't be coming to all versions. Unlike many other Virtual PC options, the environment won't require a separate workspace so you can run the individual apps as you would alongside those native to 7 -- in the example pictured, that's Word 2003 in XP mode next to Word 2007. It all sounds vaguely similar to the XP compatibility mode found in Vista, but if we're understanding this right, XPM should make legacy compatibility much less of a hassle. We haven't heard any reports of it being found in the leaked Release Candidate build, so if you're antsy to get a glimpse now, hit up the read link for a gallery.

[Thanks, Axel]

[mistah_g @ Apr 24th 2009 7:15PM]

Wow, Windows 7 just keeps getting better.

This is very convenient. I just wish it didn't come with only Pro/Ultimate :(

[arash @ Apr 24th 2009 7:31PM]

yeah theres a lot of technology

[Steveorevo @ Apr 24th 2009 8:13PM]

Well, at least you can run your old programs that have a standardized UI like pull down menus, etc. Everything now is a heaping mess of less then unique garbage. Has anyone tried Messenger as of late?

It has the now 'Vista hidden' pull down menus File, Edit, Help, etc. sitting on top of a set of new pull down menus File, etc. that have totally different options, and messed up accelerator keys.

UI Designer meet Operating System... it appears that M$ is becoming less of a consistent operational system everyday.

Even the MCE developer guidlines indicate that developers should choose a (gaudy) different color scheme for their UI menus to distinguish themselves from M$'s MCE menus... to 'not confuse the user'. Result? A complete mess of an interface.

As Bob pointed out, trying to streamline usability has turned M$ into a mess...

http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/microsoft-has-pms/

[Ghen @ Apr 24th 2009 8:35PM]

this is going to be very nice for my business environment. I already wanted to switch soon to windows 7 but like always legacy support is a bitch.

[Richard @ Apr 24th 2009 8:56PM]

Steveorevo, I agree. Everyone talks about hardware requirements and driver issues as the main problem with Vista but for me it was the user interface. They got rid of menus making options hard to find. They abandoned consistency and gave everything a unique look so nobody can find what they're looking for (just watch someone try and quickly find a button in IE). While XP presented information clearly and concisely Vista was about looks and wow and abandond functionality or usability. What could previously be done in 5 clicks now takes 20 because settings have been spread all over the place to their own windows instead of grouped into tabbed dialog boxes. The interface is wasteful of desktop space with things like glass window borders and ribbons. The ribbons themselves are inconsistent, wasteful and make options difficult to find. Everything about the interface was a step backwards

While the Vista interface looks very pretty in terms of productivity it was a big step backwards. What's worse is they've taken all the principles that made the Vista user interface so bad and extended them further in Windows 7. The new task bar and dock makes it hard to see if an application is running and impossible to see how many instances are running. The task bar is thicker wasting further desktop space while at the same time presenting information in a manner that is less clear. The new way of switching between applications is very flashing but slower than the old task bar. Dialog boxes like the theme selection box have further abandoned consistency and clarity for uniqueness and presentation.

I'm going to be ranked low for this but the fact is that the low adoption rate for Vista, particularly in businesses, shows that many other individuals and companies think it's a step back in terms of productivity and I suspect Windows 7 will be met with a similar response. Businesses in particular don’t want flashy interfaces, they want speed and productivity. This news about an XP compatibility mode in Windows 7 is good but it sounds like something of a botched solution. Why run XP on top of 7 as a virtual machine if you can just run XP? What they need to do is provide the option to have the complete XP user interface in Windows 7 without it running on a virtual machine.

Microsoft need to start listening to what users and businesses think of their interface instead of going off on their own trip and adding more ridiculous flash and wow at the cost of productivity. Until they provide an interface that focuses on productivity, clarity and consistency I'll stick with XP.

[thequinox @ Apr 24th 2009 9:08PM]

Remember that the upgrade path for 7 is different than Vista. You still get all the features of Home Premium with Pro. This is way better than skipping media center when moving up.

[De @ Apr 24th 2009 9:38PM]

How can you say it takes longer to do sometime in Vista than in XP. Vista has search which works pretty well in my experience (fewer steps too). In my opinion it requires you to know exactly how to do something in XP while in Vista it tries to guide you to where you want which is a big help for novice users.

The windows 7 taskbar is the best taskbar microsoft has even produced bar none and it is fully customizable. If you find it takes up too much space make it smaller, find that you want greater distinction between running apps add text or better yet do want you are doing now and don't place shortcuts in the taskbar. You can still use the taskbar the way it always was ( even the way it switches) but now you get thumbnail previews of running apps, thats all that was changed or should i say added.

[loosely_coupled @ Apr 24th 2009 9:44PM]

I'm wondered about this before.. Why didn't they just virtualize an XP compatibility mode in the first place and make Vista a completely new kernel and architecture without worrying about compatibility? Even with Windows 7, it appears this is just to guarantee compatibility with old apps... They could have used it as an opportunity to make major changes to the system without worrying about old apps

[Steveorevo @ Apr 24th 2009 11:07PM]

@De
"How can you say it takes longer to do sometime in Vista than in XP. Vista has search which works pretty well in my experience"

For starters, search no longer searches inside of ZIP archives, thats pretty major. How does

"Vista it tries to guide you to where you want which is a big help for novice users"

How does hiding the Help pull down menu in ALL applications help a user?

In matter of opinion it looks nice (if tie dye colors and textures is your thing), but it does waste space with thnker borders and now invisible options resulting in more key + click combos just to get to see where an option is.

Now that Adobe has made their own Window chrome for CS4 Apps, and ironically one that looks like the tried and true titlebar, min, max buttons of old WITH pull down menus that don't dissappear, it begs the question. What value does the Vista UI bring to Windows 7 and 'native apps', outside of clearly making it harder to use for novices?

[De @ Apr 25th 2009 12:08AM]

I think the reason MS removed those menus was because they became very redundant. Most if not all functionally of an app can be done with interaction with the UI of that app. Most applications however give you the option to add back for you so wish.

Can you give me an example of an app that hides the help button.

Also you may disagree but i don't find hunting through pull down menus to be not very user friendly.

[MegaBite @ Apr 25th 2009 1:40AM]

One of the problems that I see with Windows 7 is the size of the installation. For me, an x86 installation took ~7gb of space, and an x64 installation took ~11gb of space. Adding Windows XP virtualization will probably increase this even more. I really don't know why they can't make the operating system take ~1gb. Linux can do it...

[A.C.E.R. @ Apr 25th 2009 4:39AM]

@ MegaBite: partly it's the crapton of drivers that are included. Also, there are tons of little bits of functionality in Windows, they all take up space. You can always trim off the excess fat and cut the size in half without losing much of anything. And seriously man, when was the last time you looked at a linux distro? The distros that include all the bells and whistles are freakin huge.

As for me, I don't even have a fancy computer and I'm rockin 2+TB so I don't see what the big deal about a few GB is.

[Daza @ Apr 25th 2009 5:21AM]

Who cares if the install size is 7GB-11GB? Storage is cheaper than it has ever been and if even your most basic $499 laptops come with a 320GB HDD, the more space used the better.

[KarlW @ Apr 25th 2009 11:19AM]

It is certainly good news. Although there are a few caveats:
- This is application virtualisation. This creates a confusing scenario where hardware that is incompatible with Vista may be passed through to the virtual XP. The virtual XP's kernel has compatible drivers and the device works. However, this means that this device can only work in XP virtual application, not in Windows 7 native applications. For example, I have a webcam for which there are no Vista (or 7) compatible drivers. I would still be able to use this in Windows 7, but only in Skype running in the virtual machine, not the version of Skype running on the Win7 kernel. This is a bit of a confusing situation for non-technical people.

- As the linked article says, this requires processor virtualisaiton support (such as IntelVT). If Microsoft are targeting this at business customers, they may need to relax that requirement. VMX is a relatively new technology, and there are still shipping Core2Duos that don't have this. This could limit the impact of the feature. However, it's clear why they did this - virtualisation overheads make it a bit of a poor solution for every day use. Processor support gives a better experience.

From the screenshots, this looks like what Parallels does when virtualising XP on OSX - it creates dummy applications that launch the VM and launch the application inside it, and use Unity mode to make it look like a native application. It's cool to get that for free with the OS, but I'm not sure the impact will be as massive as some here are claiming it to be.

[zuner @ Apr 25th 2009 2:08PM]

This is simply the next version of Virtual PC which adds native host OS integration (removes the desktop and start menu/taskbar from the guest OS). This should in an ideal scenario work with any OS, esp Vista, but Microsoft is trying to sell if off as an exclusive Windows 7 feature for business reasons. VMWare Workstation 6.5 released in September 2008 aleady does this (called Unity mode instead of XP Mode) and isn't locked for Windows 7 hosts and Windows XP guests. Sadly, THIS WON'T GIVE ME BACK THE FEATURES REMOVED FROM WINDOWS VISTA OR WINDOWS 7 WITH NATIVE INTEGRATION. Users will still have to manage and patch this "Virtual XP".

[stevensnewest @ Apr 25th 2009 6:33PM]

@ Richard

"The task bar is thicker wasting further desktop space while at the same time presenting information in a manner that is less clear."

Right click on the taskbar > Properties > Go to Taskbar Buttons Drop-Down Box > Choose "Combine when taskbar is full" > Check off ' Use Small icons' > Press OK

See, that wasn't so hard. :)

[Team Louish @ Apr 26th 2009 8:30PM]

I am confused. Why does it need virtualization? I have Office 2003 installed on Windows 7 with no problem at all. I haven't had any problem running software I had used back from the XP days, what would you use this for?

[Joseph @ Apr 24th 2009 7:16PM]

smartest way to handle legacy support.

Mac OS X used to come w/ Classic. Same deal. Sometimes there is legacy software you just dont want to lose.

[haX0r @ Apr 24th 2009 7:21PM]

Agreed. Pretty smooth.

[bob @ Apr 24th 2009 7:46PM]

but it was free, for all users. of note, this means its pretty much as easy for said users to be virtualising windows in OSX or Linux just the same, it send a message.

[rcarm @ Apr 24th 2009 8:01PM]

Didn't you had to have a copy of the old mac os to run a program?

[Pretol @ Apr 24th 2009 8:23PM]

That's not analogous at all!

Classic and X are NOTHING ALIKE... Classic wouldn't run on X anyway you feed it to it.
7 is a progression of XP... XP code should generally run on 7 anyway..

[billcantfart @ Apr 24th 2009 8:29PM]

@rcam

I don't know about earlier releases, but Tiger 10.4 and OS 9 were on the same disc.

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Apr 24th 2009 9:41PM]

It is pretty clever. Microsoft has the largest user base, AND is very reluctant to force change on people; backwards compatibility has left a ton of cruft in Windows.

If they use this model in the future in order to strip out legacy junk from the new OS, while still providing a way to use legacy apps in a virtualized environment, it could make the whole OS faster.

[Luigi193 @ Apr 25th 2009 12:20PM]

Ahhh classic mode... good times, good times.

[SimbaDogg @ Apr 27th 2009 1:45AM]

yeah...thats spot on. my dad for example uses this CAD software at his work, and he wanted to be able to run @ home but he has vista on his laptop, and the program requires xp. Seeing that it was a 4500 dollar program he was willing to buy it himself.

[Down @ Apr 24th 2009 7:16PM]

For those people who want Windows 7 but secretly want Windows XP.

[Leindurstit @ Apr 24th 2009 7:16PM]

Scratch that, reverse it.

[blaw @ Apr 24th 2009 7:22PM]

Long live XP !!! It just refuses to die.

[Brandon @ Apr 24th 2009 7:38PM]

I hear that. I've wanted it to die for a long time now, but it just wont.

[crow610 @ Apr 24th 2009 8:47PM]

Just like Jason

[maveric101 @ Apr 24th 2009 11:43PM]

even windows 2000 is still fairly widely used by companies (not usually for workstations, but for testing equipment).

[bighap @ Apr 24th 2009 7:21PM]

Windows 7 plus XP FTW!

[redspear @ Apr 24th 2009 7:26PM]

I did a study group a while back. The first thing I noticed when booting up the PC they gave me was that it was Windows 7...Which got me excited. They had me testing out XP in a virtual machine space. Asking me what I would normally look to do and how it was different then my other virtual experience. Nothing really two exciting but when they asked me how much I woudl pay I got a quizical look at my face since the rest of the study gave me the impression it would be intergrated with the OS. I said around 149-199.

[Ariel @ Apr 24th 2009 7:52PM]

Are you kidding me? You DO realize that you could get a copy of XP for like $100 and that VirtualBox is free, right?

[anythingbutmine0 @ Apr 24th 2009 8:09PM]

Are we supposed to believe your story?

[WinterTiger @ Apr 24th 2009 8:18PM]

Amen to the VirtualBox comment, check out seamless mode... I've been running that on both 7077 and Vista Ult. for a while now, same XP SP3 image, I used it for maybe two apps though, but nice to have it just in case.

[Ghen @ Apr 25th 2009 9:41AM]

firefox has a built in spell-checker. Its not perfect, but it picks up woudl.

[Slick @ Apr 24th 2009 7:27PM]

Uhh... Win!

[Joseph @ Apr 24th 2009 7:29PM]

Sup Dawg! I heard you like XP, so we put an XP in your Windows 7 so you can Crash while you BSOD! j/k
/trollbait

[Col. Readily Apparent Upon Cursory Inspection @ Apr 24th 2009 7:36PM]

Grumble grumble grumble, Mac. Grumble groan YELL YELL Apple. Scree grumble grumble groan bitch moan M$FT sux. Grumble bitch moan grumble Snow Leopard.

/trollbait response

Sent from my iPhone.

[Bobsley @ Apr 24th 2009 8:04PM]

Hey Col. that was awsome!

[ahha @ Apr 24th 2009 8:13PM]

Grumble grumble grumble, Linux. Grumble groan YELL YELL Ubuntu. Scree grumble grumble groan bitch moan M$FT sux. Grumble bitch moan grumble "Jaunty Jackalope". Scree grumble grumble groan bitch moan IT'S FREE!!!!

/trollbait response

[giantenemycrab @ Apr 24th 2009 7:36PM]

That is a BRILLIANT move on Microsoft's part.

[Ariel @ Apr 24th 2009 7:53PM]

Yes, IF running visualized XP in Windows 7 is not slower than Vista on hardware.

[rcarm @ Apr 24th 2009 8:03PM]

Yeah, but vista has compatibility issues with some xp programs

[Magallanes @ Apr 25th 2009 9:56AM]

So i herd u liek Win7.
:-P

[chaoshunter555 @ Apr 24th 2009 7:36PM]

The Win7 Beta is pretty sweet as it is. I'm glad to see MS is being serious this time. I dont mind spending the money to buy the OS, IF its done right. While Vista is pretty good now, I refused to buy it at launch. Win7 is shaping up to be much better out of the gate

[bureX @ Apr 24th 2009 7:36PM]

Virtualization solves legacy app problems, let's just hope that from now on no OS is halted back in development for the purpose of maintaining compatibility with accounting software from 1998...

[Quikboy @ Apr 24th 2009 7:41PM]

Great. The best of both worlds. The new and improved and the legacy.

BTW: Supersite posts are written by just one guy - Paul Thurrott - not a whole 'gang'. :)