Ken said:
I know of 4 alternatives:
1. Parallels Workstation
http://www.parallels.com/products/workstation/
2. VMware Workstation 9
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/overview.html
3. Virtual Box
https://www.virtualbox.org/
4. Qemu
http://wiki.qemu.org/Index.html
I've always wondered if the previous MS Virtual PC 2007 virtual machine
software from MS would run under Windows 7, but I've never tried it,
since I don't have a decent Win7 machine.
I've also wondered if XP Mode for Win 7 was a standalone program. If
so, and you had a copy, would it run under Home? Like the old XP Backup
and Restore program is standalone, and would run just fine under XP
Home, AFAIK.
Hope this helps.
WinXP Mode consists of two software components.
1) Windows Virtual PC. This is the Windows 7 version of VPC2007,
with dumbed down GUI. The GUI makes it pure misery to work with.
VPC2007 had a functional interface, so they couldn't keep it :-(
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3702
2) WinXP Mode image (500MB?) . This would be an image file containing
a pre-licensed copy of WinXP. I've never downloaded this or run it,
since I'm running Premium on the laptop.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002
You can download just the Windows Virtual PC part. Then, use
a retail or OEM WinXP CD and license key, and install that. I
can't tell you though, whether that's functionally identical to (2).
One thing that WinXP Mode uses, is Terminal Services RDP, so
that a program launched in WinXP guest "floats" without a VM
frame being drawn around it. That's different than how
VPC2007 works for example. In VPC2007, the WinXP virtual machine
would have a frame drawn around it. The Terminal Service RDP
method is used, to make it look like WinXP Mode programs are
"integrated" into the Windows 7 desktop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_xp_mode#Windows_XP_Mode
Actually, WinXP Mode supports both. It can "make the floating windows".
It can also be run rooted, with a frame drawn around the WinXP session.
For some "configuration" operations, a user needs to run the
rooted mode, in order to use Control Panels and the like.
I've installed (1) on my Windows 7 laptop, and I may even have installed
a "foreign" OS in it. But it wasn't a lot of fun, in terms of
exchanging files between the two environments. I think I eventually
removed it, as it was too much misery for me. Also, I wanted to
run VirtualBox for a test, and my policy is generally to only
have one VM environment on the machine at a time. The VM tools
may each have their own drivers, and I don't want to be testing
how many shims can be supported in the network stack at one
time
Call me a doubter...
To give an example of how VM software isn't entirely benign,
take VPC2007 on my current machine. I've experienced variations
in floppy drive data transfer rate, as a function of whether
the VM software has been run since the computer was booted.
And for some reason, it was the inverse of what you'd expect.
The machine seemed to be blowing the interleave factor, if
the VM floppy shim had not loaded. So if I'd never run VPC2007
in a WinXP session, the floppy would run at about half speed.
Then, if I fired up VPC2007 (and didn't even use the floppy),
the floppy speed would return to normal. That example
is intended to show, that *something* is done to hardware
interfaces, to make them accessible to the emulations done
in the guest. In that case, the guest can access the floppy
if needed. In fact, it's how a person might run MSDOS
in there (from a boot floppy).
Paul
