grelmar - 6:35 am on May 13, 2009 (gmt 0)

Oh, and I forgot to mention something pretty significant.

MS is going to release a "Power toy" like app that creates an XP "compatability mode".

Windows Team [windowsteamblog.com]

I've done a fair bit of reading on this in some tech blogs, unlinkable here.

What it looks like they're going to do is have a very specialized Virtual PC appliance that allows semi-transparent installation of legacy apps inside an XP VPC "wrapper". The apps will leave an icon on the desktop, or the taskbar, or start menu, or whatever, just like normal applications. When launched, they'll run inside a normal looking window.

But this is all smoke and mirrors around the VPC appliance, which is what's really handling the application and the interface between the application, the underlying OS (Windows 7), and the hardware.

It's an interesting bit of kit.

It's also interesting that MS is finally realizing that there are plenty of reasons why people and corporations need to maintain legacy applications. If they'd figured this out for Vista, it would have faced much wider adoption.