Windows 7's virtual 'XP mode' could mean support nightmares

Posted by tracyanne on Apr 28, 2009 2:29 AM EDT
Computer World; By Gregg Keizer 		Mail this story
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Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner Inc., echoed Cherry's take on what motivated Microsoft to offer XPM. "It shows the extent to [which] Microsoft wants to get people who use XP onto Windows 7," he said.

But Silver sees some big downsides. "You'll have to support two versions of Windows," he said. "Each needs to be secured, antivirused, firewalled and patched. Businesses don't want to support two instances of Windows on each machine. If a company has 10,000 PCs, that's 20,000 instances of Windows."

The other big problem Silver foresees with XPM is that it may cause some companies to neglect the real task: making sure the software they run is compatible with Windows 7. "This is a great Band-Aid, but companies need to heal their applications," Silver said. "They'll be doing themselves a disservice if, because of XPM, they're not making sure that all their apps support Windows 7."

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Support nightmare tracyanne 10 1,632 Apr 29, 2009 11:21 AM

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