Virtualisation comes in many forms and Microsoft has been in this market for many years already with their Terminal Services product ( application virtualisation ). More recently, Hyper-V for platform virtualisation has been unveiled as part of the Server 2008 product set and then App-V for Desktop virtualisation.
MS has also just demoed their server application virtualisation ( I wonder what this will be called ) which is a little more sophisticated and working code is now available for the product where applications and OS’s are separated. I’m not completely sold on the idea that came about as part of Microsoft’s purchase of Softricity last year. I suppose it could assist in application management in a virtual environment but let’s wait and see what the end product looks like.
Further on from this, Microsoft has indicated that Vista will be efficient enough to run on netbooks – I have my doubts based on historical happenings but as I’ve not tested 7, I’ll wait to pass judgment. [ On a side note it’s interesting that RC1 only expires in 2010 – can you hear the upgrade bells ringing? ] MS itself has admitted that the new Win XP virt mode in 7 might not run ( I think more like definitely won’t run well ) on these netbooks. And the possibility of a crippled 7 Starter package for netbooks could make things even worse ( 3 applications at once? – I run about 10 on my laptop at any one time ).
XP mode will require 2GB of memory, Pro, Enterprise or Ultimate Edition, but most limiting, CPU hardware Virtualisation support – this last item alone will rule out 90% of the current hardware market. Only recent Core 2Duo’s, AMD Athlon X2, Opteron and Xeon’s have this support which immediately negates a large part of the global hardware market. So the question to ask is who is the XP virt mode meant for? I would say those people who can neither afford it nor have the hardware to run it …
XP mode is essentially a new efficient version of Virtual PC so nothing earth shattering there. You could run an older version on your non-VT capable system but it would be a little slower. There’s also VirtualBox, VMware and others so in the end, I don’t think XP mode in Windows 7 really offers anything for the masses. Microsoft has always executed fairly well on the server side but the desktop has become a minefield for them in recent years. It continues to provide SKUs of product that fall outside of their customer needs. It’s all focus on profit ( be it dwindling ) and little on what’s important.
Update:
First my apologies for mentioning Vista where I should be mentioning Win 7 – it’s all so confusing ; ) Second, a bit more tech info on XP mode is probably ‘a good thing’.
XP mode integrates much more than your usual Virt app with the OS ( as the next public release of Virtual PC will ). Menu items from XP mode will be added to your normal program menu, saving of documents in the virtual environment go to your normal Documents folder in the main OS file/folder area, clipboard and USB support is available between virtual and non-virtual apps, and printing is supported as a passthrough function from the virtual OS.
Besides the limitations mentioned in the main article there are a few more. You can’t run a full virtual session with a integrated virtual app, you need to run full VM to attach USB devices such as cameras, there can be confusing messages between both non-virtual and virtual OS’s, and performance of starting integrated virtual apps is sluggish. But I can see MS tweaking Virtual PC over time to get past some of these.