So you are thinking about upgrading to Windows 7, but are wondering, “how well will it run my programs?” With the new feature called Windows XP mode built into Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate Editions, program compatability promises to be almost a non issue!

Windows XP mode is built around the new version of Virtual PC, simply called Windows Virtual PC. If you own a copy of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate, you will be able to download a virtual hard drive image of Windows XP Professional for use with Windows Virtual PC.

The new version of Virtual PC will bring a long awaited feature to the table, which is USB support. As of the beta which is a free download for the Windows 7 RC, it doesn’t work quite well yet, but since it is only a beta, hopefully they will have all the issues hammered out in time for the October 22 release. Now that the final version is out, the USB support is absolutely flawless. To be able to use a USB device, you click the USB button at the top of the Virtual PC window and select attach.

On to how windows xp mode works. Those of you familiar with virtual pc will know that when you install a program inside a virtual machine, you have to first start the virtual machine, then run the program. The new windows virtual pc, however, watches the programs that are installed inside it, and makes them available on the Windows 7 start menu. When you click the start menu link to start the program, the program will launch in its own windows xp style window. The program will even be able to open files located within Windows 7! You do not have to save them inside the Windows XP virtual machine.

For the system requirements, Obviously Windows 7, and 15gb of hard drive space. Microsoft also recommends your computer have at least 2gb of ram. The final requirement, which may also be the most difficult, is that your processor support hardware assisted virtualization. This greatly speeds the performance of virtual pc, but you would be suprised as to which processors support it.

Supported processors are:

Intel:Desktop CPUS

Core 2 DuoE4300/4400/4500/4600/4700 NO
E6300/6320/6400/6420/6540/6550 YES
E6600/6700/6750/6850 YES
E7200/7300/7400/7500 NO
E8190 NO
E8200/8300/8400/8500/8600 YES

Core 2 ExtremeQX6700/6800/6850 YES
QX9650/9770/9775 YES
X6800 YES

Core 2 QuadQ6600/6700 YES
Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S NO
Q9300/9400/9400S YES
Q9450/9550/9550S/9650 YES

Core i7/Core i7 ExtremeI7-920/940 YES
I7-965/975 YES

Pentium D/Pentium EE805/820/830/840 NO
915/925/935/945 NO
920/930/940/950/960 YES
955/965 YES

Pentium for DesktopE2140/2160/2180/2200/2220 NO
E5200/5300/5400 NO

Mobile CPU products

Core 2 Duo Mobile

L7200/7300/7400/7500 YES
P7350/7450 NO P7370 YES
P8400/8600/8700/9500/9600 YES
SL9300/9400/9600 YES
SP9300/9400/9600 YES
SU9300/9400/9600 YES
T5200/5250/5270/5300/5450/5470 NO
T5500/5600 YES
T5550/5670/5750/5800/5850/5870/5900 NO
T6400/6570 NO
T7100/7200/7250/7300/7400 YES
T7500/7600/7700/7800 YES
T8100/8300 YES
T9300/9400/9500/9550/9600/9800 YES
U7500/U7600 YES

Core 2 Extreme Mobile

QX9300 YES
X7800/7900 YES
X9000/9100 YES

Core 2 Quad Mobile

Q9000 YES
Q9100 NO

Core 2 Solo

SU3300/3500 YES
U2100/2200 YES

Core Duo

L2300/2400/2500 YES
T2050/2250 NO
T2300/2400/2500/2600/2700 YES
T2300E/2350/2450 NO
U2400/2500 YES

Core Solo

T1300/1400 YES
T1350 NO
U1300/1400/1500 YES

Source

Intel to Add support for Intel Virtualization for

Core 2 Quad Q8300,
Core 2 Duo E7500,
Core 2 Duo E7400,
Pentium E5400 and
Pentium E5300.

AMD is a lot easier, as all cpu’s shipped in the last few years, with the exception of semprons and pre revision e turion and pre revision f athlon desktop processors will support it.

If you are in doubt, or your processor is not listed, you can use this tool to tell you if the chip supports hardware assisted virtualization. Note that if you are running a 64bit version of windows, the tool will only tell you if hardware assisted virtualization is available, not whether or not it is enabled. It must be enabled in your computers bios in order to function.

Thats it for windows xp mode! Next, I will go over the more technical aspects of Windows 7, including the “under the hood” changes.

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For all you gamers and autocad/3dsmax users out there, Windows 7 will ship with the new version of direct x, direct x 11. One of the new big improvements is that now 2d stuff like text and pictures are now hardware accelerated. DirectX can now emulate a graphics card with its software rasterizer. Another huge change is the GPGPU support. GPGPU stands for general purpose graphics processing unit. This allows you to run programs on your graphics card! Unlike a cpu, which may have 1-4 cores, graphics cards can have as many as 800 cores, making them perfect for things like video transcoding. Several other applications, like folding@home, can take advantage of this. Many other applications, like adobe photoshop and premier, can also take advantage of hardware accelerated graphics. The new window manager runs a lot more efficiently if you have a DirectX 10 graphics card with a WDDM 1.1 driver. The window manager will use significantly less memory and the amount of memory used will remain constant despite the amount of windows open. Cards with only a WDDM 1.0 driver will operate in the same fashion as Windows Vista.

Now for the core operating system changes. Windows 7 can now support up to 256 logical processors. I would like to see the system they tested that on! Another great new feature is multifunction device containers. Now those of you with your all in one printers can find all of its functions in one location, rather than having to navigate all over the operating system. I’m sure some of you have heard about the upcoming USB 3.0 specification, however Windows 7 will not initially ship with support. Support will come through an update when the specification is released.

For storage changes, Windows 7 can now recognize solid state drives. It will turn off the windows disk defragmenter as this can have a detrimental effect on your solid state drive. It will also physically erase deleted data more aggressively, making it easier to write back data over the deleted sectors. Windows 7 will also format an SSD differently than a mechanical hard disk drive. Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterpries support mounting and booting off virtual hard drives, the ones virtual pc use.

Boot times are drastically improved. Microsoft dedicated a team of developers solely to improve the boot time. They found that most of the causes of the lengthy boot times are caused by services that load on startup but are not needed immediatly. They were also able to improve the parallel loading of device drivers and reduce the amount of necessary system services.

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