Windows 7 secret unveiled: WinXP mode

Three weeks ago, I mentioned that Microsoft was planning a big, huge announcement about something new in Windows 7. Here’s what I said:

My guess is that Microsoft will announce some sort of Windows XP emulator that runs under Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. (No, they won’t call it an emulator, they’ll call it “Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation” but – with apologies to the developers who hate the term – it’s basically a fancy emulator.) That’ll make a lot of companies happy. But it’s not something I would call major.

Looks like Paul Thurrott was just authorized by his Microsoft handlers to spill the beans. Secret No More: Revealing Windows XP Mode for Windows 7.

Gawrsh. Where have I heard that before? Says Paul:

XPM is built on the next generation Microsoft Virtual PC 7 product line, which requires processor-based virtualization support (Intel and AMD) to be present and enabled on the underlying PC, much like Hyper-V, Microsoft’s server-side virtualization platform. However, XPM is not Hyper-V for the client. It is instead a host-based virtualization solution like Virtual PC; the hardware assistance requirement suggests this will be the logical conclusion of this product line from a technological standpoint. That is, we fully expect future client versions of Windows to include a Hyper-V-based hypervisor.

Sorry, but that’s even less interesting than I thought it would be – and I wasn’t expecting much. Paul (Raf?) goes on to say:

XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7, but is considered an out-of-band update, like Windows Live Essentials.)

Which means those of you running Windows 7 Home Premium won’t get it.

That’s OK. I don’t get it. Sure, running a WinXP emulation window on a Win7 desktop is kinda cool, but I don’t see a whole lot of advantage of this approach over, say, running a VMWare window – and I bet the processing overhead is excruciating.

I wonder what happens to WinXP drivers?