Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode provides you with the flexibility to run many older productivity applications on a Windows 7 based PC.
All you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode which is a virtual Windows XP environment running under Windows Virtual PC. The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop and then you can run them directly from Windows 7.
Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC are best experienced on your new Windows 7 PC. Microsoft will be soon releasing the beta of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate.
Click image for enlarged screenshot.
This sounds like exciting news coming out of Redmond and could spell the end of Windows XP. However, we have to see what the final release (and the beta for that matter) looks like. We have seen many big promises coming out of Redmond in the past and we hope this isn't another one that doesn't live up to the hype. If this does what is promised then legacy applications (poorly written or no longer supported programs that will only run on XP) can now be run perfectly from within windows 7. This would make the decision for companies to upgrade XP machines to windows 7 a little easier as it would eliminate concerns for their essential programs, or programs that they have already invested in, not running on the new Windows OS (something that happened a lot with vista).
Obviously there will be some IT personnel resources needed to configure virtual PC on those machines and we have to see if there are any licensing issues on machines upgraded from XP to Windows 7 and the consequent reinstallation of these programs on Virtual PC for XP mode. I do think that these issues won't be major roadblocks as hopefully this will be thought through and Software vendors will be flexible with these situations.
We will know more once Windows XP mode and Windows Virtual PC is released and we can test these theories. We will follow up with our thoughts and reviews once it is.
Original Source can be found here.
[...] ability to stream media between PCs in a Slingbox-like fashion. Another addition — that of an XP virtual machine built into the Professional and Ultimate version of Windows 7 — was announced by Microsoft on [...]