Windows 7 and Windows XP Mode – Cool!

(NOTE: This is updated in a subsequent post to cover my ignorance)

I really love Windows 7 in all its 64-bit goodness.  I get all my memory.  It’s fast, it’s convenient. 

But there’s one thing that I don’t like – my poor broadband modem isn’t yet supported.  I need my broadband modem, because several of my clients just won’t let me jack-in to their network. 

So the first time I dug into “Windows XP Mode” I came up a bit disappointed.  What? It’s just Virtual-PC?  Well, yes and no.  It’s a newer, better version of Windows XP that I didn’t have to build myself.  And… wait for it… I get to use my USB broadband modem in the the virtual machine.

 

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 05, 2009
  Did you just install XP on a VPC, and it has those features automatically - or is this something different?

• Anonymous
  May 05, 2009
  Well, yes and no.  As far as I can tell, it is simply a VM, BUT, it's a pre-built VM that comes as an additional install AFTER installing Windows 2007 VPC Beta.  It's an additional 450+ MB download (really pretty small, considering).  There are some additional features over VPC 2007, but so far I don't know if that's a product of the VPC beta or "Windows XP Mode".