Windows 7

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May 27, 2009

Windows 7 – XP Mode

Posted by Elliot Lawrence under Windows 7 | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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I have been working with Windows 7 as my main laptop operating system since approximately the release of the beta – I have run it on an older machine and now I run the release candidate on a brand new machine. The specs of my laptop are Toshiba Satellite, 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo T6400, 64 Bit, 4GB Ram and all the trimmings. One item it does not support is Intel VT. And this is key.

I actually had a need to use the XP Mode add on to Windows 7 which is available for download for use with the release candidate. Great, a real world need for compatibility and a good test scenario, or so I thought. My problem to be solved was that of running the Juniper Netscreen VPN client which doesn’t support 64 bit operating systems or Windows 7  (first point very frustrating, second point fair enough).

I read the provided documentation and quickly discovered that XP Mode (which is a pre-configured virtual machine containing Windows XP) does not support processors that do not have Intel VT. This I found strange as Virtual PC 2007 SP1 the standalone product does work without Intel VT. For people who don’t believe documentation, I can confirm after installing it all and ignoring what the software developer said,  that it is indeed correct. It really doesn’t work without Intel VT.

My conclusion then is that though XP Mode sounded pretty useful, especially for this kind of issue, it is actually going to be mostly useless to most people. I have 10 PCs available to me and only one has Intel VT support (and that’s because I ensured it did).  My brand new shiny laptop which is mid range is therefore no use to me in supporting legacy apps. So I am back to manually installing Virtual PC 2007 SP1 as I always have to support any legacy requirements. That’s fine for me but much more of a headache for the average IT department that wants to roll our Windows 7 64 Bit but has to support not 64 bit compatible applications.

I realize that more expensive laptops and desktops will support Intel VT and if you want XP Mode you will need to buy one of those, but it seems a little shortsighted not make it work on any hardware platform as initially it sounded like a great idea.

 

April 3, 2009

I cant wait for Windows 7

Posted by Elliot Lawrence under Windows 7 | Tags: , , , , , , |
1 Comment 

I am very excited by the release of Windows 7  from a personal perspective and a business perspective. It can’t come too soon in my opinion.

I have been running Windows 7 Beta on my primary business laptop since the download was available. I was fearful that this was going to be another “pigs ear” of an OS like Vista. Now I am one of those people who has persevered with Vista and the experience improved over time; once I turned off the annoying features and found my way round the interface so I could do things my way.

I have met very few people (I can count them on one hand) who actually like Vista and there was good reason for this opinion. It was slow, the interface though pretty initially, was all over the shop, they had moved everything for no good reason and file access was tiresome. That was without talking about the User Account Control and plenty of other annoyances. I found people to be aggressively negative about the product in fact.

So here are a few reasons to get excited:

  • Since running Windows 7 I have found that the OS is super fast, even on old hardware with 512MB of RAM – I was really impressed
  • The interface has been tightened up and greatly improved and I find it much easy to achieve tasks and just get around
  • The product fits together much better overall, just like XP does and support for devices and software is great (the ones I use)
  • It is good looking and you wont be quite as envious of the Mac user sitting next to you in Starbucks

From a business point of view, this is the release that Vista should have been, and I don’t think there is any reason not to adopt it quickly. There will be a learning curve for users as the interface is significantly different to XP and at the back end if you are deploying it and managing it using Active Directory and group policies the features and items you can control centrally just keeps growing, which is good of course but means more effort to tune it to your particular needs. Still out of the box it is far more secure, stable and complete.

Being in the business of helping companies deploy technology and in particular Microsoft infrastructure , I have felt a large hole in my business because I havent come across anyone who wanted to roll the product out. I know some companies have, but I feel they are few and far between. I have a 1000 seat plus financial services customer who is about to roll out Windows XP for the third time. The last two roll outs have been whilst Vista has been available! They have chosen to do a new OS software refresh with everything but the OS being refreshed!

I am sure we are not the only IT services company missing out on these projects, before it felt like a conveyor belt that always turned on time, Windows 95/ 3.11 to NT4, NT4 to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 to XP and then it all stopped.

With the current economic crisis still taking it’s toll, businesses starting to perform hardware and software rerfreshes to their user base would be great for everyone concerned and that is why Windows 7 cant come soon enough.

I will be talking about particular Windows 7  features in future entries.

 

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