virtualbox.org

Just released from Microsoft recently is their attempt to move customers over to Windows 7 from XP, depite many compatibility issues.

Many here may remember what Apple did when MacOS X was first released to move their userbase to their new UNIX-based OS. They created a virtual machine to run the classic OS 9 applications inside of it. This feature has since been removed from the OS X installation. Like Microsoft always does, copying great ideas from Apple, they did it again with Windows 7 and creating a classic mode for running legacy Windows XP application on their new shiny OS.

It basically uses their Virtual PC virtual machine platform for running the XP mode. You will be-able to finally run this version in a seamless mode, as well as launch legacy XP applications directly from your Windows 7 start menu, according to many news sites. Lets just hope that the performance of Virtual PC is greatly improved by the time they release Windows 7 packaged with this feature. At this point in time, VirtualBox surpasses Virtual PC in many areas. However, is VirtualBox is killed off by Oracle, Windows 7 users who were planning on using VirtualBox for compatibility for older software can simply use the pre-installed XP mode on their Windows 7 systems.

To further make Windows 7 more appealing to businesses, every copy of Windows 7 Business and higher up to Ultimate with include an XP license for the Virtual XP mode. This leaves out Home users to purchase a seperate XP license, if they plan to use legacy Windows XP applications at home. However, perhaps during the PC upgrade from XP to Windows 7, it takes your XP installation and puts it into a VHD file. Windows 7 also appears to include the feature to boot VHD files directly from the system boot menu without loading Windows 7 first. This is very similar to the Linux loop bock device booting, as basically a VHD is a loop block device for the Windows world.

References:
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/busine ... al-pc.aspx
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_pre_shots.asp

I am posting this here, as it does relate to those VirtualBox users who plan on upgrading to Windows 7, and for those Windows users who may be left in the dark if anything may happen with VirtualBox after Oracle. It also poses as a competition for VirtualBox and VMWare for businesses who would only use this for a compatibility layer. Also, as two virtualization technologies cannot co-exist on the same PC, if Windows 7 is pre-packaged with Virtual PC, could VirtualBox or VMWare still run properly?

I think this is all a little premature but to add to the questions and answer of the post. I have and do run both Virtual PC and Virtualbox at the same time in Vista business. I have never seen a problem and hopefully that will not change. I started out with VPC and have migrated almost all of the VMs to VirtualBox but since I had Win Server 2003 Ent. configured and saw no problem while running them both at the same time I could see no reason to migrate it. Only time will tell I guess.

You can run multiple VM applications at the same time, as long as you don't use Hardware Virtualization with them. Run one with VT-x/AMD-v is possible, but the other MUST run in software mode.