When news of Windows 7's "XP Mode" came out recently, there was much rejoicing among those who were concerned about legacy support in Microsoft's upcoming OS. But now we learn that Microsoft and Intel have contrived to make XPM unavailable to many Intel users.

We knew it was too good to be true! Just when we expected Microsoft to make major inroads to loosen the grasp of reluctant users to their Windows XP OS came the news that Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 will only run on virtualization capable CPU's. "This new wrinkle was the discovery that Windows 7's recently announced XP Mode would only work on processors that supported either Intel's VT or AMD's AMD-V. The vast majority of AMD's lineup, except for Sempron, has AMD-V and will work, but the Intel situation is much more complicated, and in some ways, worse." Read the rest of this entry »