“Windows XP Mode” for Windows 7: Bad Idea?

Posted on April 04, 2009 in Opinion tagged with , , , , ,

Microsoft recently announced its inclusion of a “Windows XP Mode” for Windows 7. Users will be able to run their applications in a virtual machine running Windows XP SP3. For us virtualization folk, this is pretty neat that virtualization will make it to the average user, but is it the wrong way to handle compatibility issues?

Short Answer: Yes.

The best way to handle the compatibility issue, according to many journalists, is to use Microsoft App-V to virtualize just the application and the files it requires, not the entire OS. Managing a second file system, registry and driver set will be tedious and more than likely, won’t work very well.

My idea? Don’t bother with it at all. Software Developers have lagged behind since Vista was announced in 2005. Vista flopped in part because of the developers failure to participate. Do we really want to allow these people to program assuming everyone in the world can still run XP? When will we ever move forward?