Blog items Arjan Beijer

Now that Windows 7 is on the market, people are switching to this new Operating System from Microsoft. The hardware you can buy nowadays is very powerfull and equipped with lots of memory. Even the 64 bit version of Windows 7 is a very good choice to work with, because of the capability to use more memory than the “normal” version of Windows 7. But one thing is a real headache for most of the people and that is application compatibility, at least they think it is. Luckily Microsoft invented Windows XP mode for that !

What does it do ? When you install the Windows XP mode, it installs a virtual machine called Virtual PC with a Windows XP image in it. No need to activate the machine, it is already activated and has a fully functional version of Windows XP. The fun part of it is that it has the capability to run seamless applications ! So now my Apple iTunes can be installed inside the Windows XP machine, BUT when the integration is turned on, you will see the application in your Windows 7 startmenu ! In fact every application will appear on your Windows 7 startmenu when installed on Windows XP mode.

Is it application virtualization ? Well I like to think so, you can compare it with the published application functionality of a Citrix Xenapp server, one of the components of Flexcast.

Ok that is nice, but how about USB capability ? Can I for example connect my iPhone to Itunes and make it synchronize ? Even install a new firmware ?

For this you will need USB redirection from the host system (Windows 7) to the virtual XP image. And this can be enabled ! Just right click the application on the windows 7 taskbar and select the usb device and you are done.

However what I did not like was the speed of the Windows XP image. A simple synchronization of a few apps and a music album took me over an hour, and even worse I got some nasty error codes. It did not even try to restore a new firmware to my iPhone because of this. Also the discovery of my music collection (10.000+ songs) took for ages and I just gave up after letting it run for 15 hours !

So how about adjusting the virtual machine ? Well there is only basic stuff available, for example you can adjust the assigned memory to the Windows XP image, but there is no option to give it 2 (virtual)CPU’s. After closing the application, the virtual machine will keep running, but after some minutes it hibernates.

After clicking the application the virtual machine wakes up from hibernation and starts your application again.

Although I like the concept of seamless applications inside your Windows 7 environment, it still needs improvement on Speed and USB connectivity. Let’s wait and see if Microsoft will continue to develop this solution. The most beautiful part of it is that it’s free and gives you Windows XP as a bonus to Windows 7.

You can download Windows XP mode at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Arjan Beijer