Are you ready to say goodbye to XP?

[drg]

Hollow laughter... I discovered a few weeks ago that both my film scanners didn't work under Windows 7 64 bits, including my Nikon Coolscan IV. Quite a blow as I was thinking of rescanning some of my best film images for a picture library.

So I built a VMWARE Windows XP virtual machine to run inside my Windows 7 64 bits system. I plug in the scanners, boot up the virtual machine, log into XP - and it's back to scanning like in the good old days of film..

This is an IT Pro solution. You need a little bit of knowledge plus the software licenses and all the installation media.

Oh and by the way - I much prefer Windows 7 to Windows XP and Vista. It starts up much faster and it's ability to repair itself is reassuring.

I skipped Vista after a some not desirable early experiences with it. I did have to do some development work related to a 64-bit environment for two years and someone else provided the machines and the Vista.

I starting using W7 pretty early and have been very pleased. More hardware capability (i.e. lots of memory) and file operations are vastly improved.

Still have a two XP notebooks that just keep on chugging and are perfect for field work. They gotta go because all my Adobe suites just don't work and I am planning the complete upgrade for all boxes (Windows and Mac) to Lightroom 4 plus some other new goodies that just don't work at all in a native 32 bit environment.

The one big problem with virtualizng under windows is the software and added expense. In the US the more powerful (beyond Windows Home Premium)including Ultimate is only cost effective for someone who lives in front of their machine or has a corporation/client paying for it upfront. Just how much did that VMWARE license you have cost?

A lot of home and small users are already getting sticker shock when they look at what they want versus what they can easily get and support. We knew it was coming, everyone was warned.

Just a reminder to look down the road a bit. Certainly if you are going to buy a new camera and want full RAW capability and want to print with a modern photographic printer.

[Franglais]

...
The one big problem with virtualizng under windows is the software and added expense. In the US the more powerful (beyond Windows Home Premium)including Ultimate is only cost effective for someone who lives in front of their machine or has a corporation/client paying for it upfront. Just how much did that VMWARE license you have cost?
..

I have a corporate license for VMWARE Workstation. I use it a lot in my job, it's saved several projects already. Virtualisation is great technology.

Looking around the VMWARE site I see that there are a couple of FREE products that I've never tried but which look interesting. Have to get round to it soon:

- VMWARE converter to transform a your XP physical machine into a virtual one

VMware vCenter Converter, Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines

- VMWARE player to run the virtual machine produced by the converter inside your Windows 7 machine (and use up some of that memory that you have under Windows 7)

VMware Player: Run Windows 7, Chrome OS - Free Download for a Virtual PC

BTW before getting too enthusiastic - if your Windows XP license is OEM i.e. it came with your computer - it may not be valid on another machine. I don't think an XP OEM license will work on a virtual machine, and I don't think that your host machine's Windows 7 license covers the virtual machine's XP installation either. But I could be wrong. Must spend more time on this..

[mattb]

I will not miss XP. It's had a good run but it's old technology now and I want to be able to take advantage of new hardware.
The virtual solution is a good bridge but it's not always practical in the long run IMO. Another free option is Microsoft's Virtual PC. There's also a version of that built into Windows 7 and it's called XP compatibility mode. I haven't used it, but it's another potential way around these limitations. I believe VPC required a licensed copy of XP (or whatever OS you want to run) but compatibility mode does not.

Matt (Software engineer at my day job)

[Franglais]

I will not miss XP. It's had a good run but it's old technology now and I want to be able to take advantage of new hardware.
The virtual solution is a good bridge but it's not always practical in the long run IMO. Another free option is Microsoft's Virtual PC. There's also a version of that built into Windows 7 and it's called XP compatibility mode. I haven't used it, but it's another potential way around these limitations. I believe VPC required a licensed copy of XP (or whatever OS you want to run) but compatibility mode does not.

Matt (Software engineer at my day job)

Virtual PC (and Windows 7 XP mode) will only run on the top versions of Windows 7 (Professional and Ultimate). It's a true virtual solution running as a 32-bit system. There should be no problem with the drivers.

Windows 7 also has a "compatability" option where you can execute a program as though it was running under an older version of Windows (XP, even Windows 95). However if you're running a 64-bit version of Windows 7:

- you must install the right drivers to make your scanner hardware work
- the drivers for XP are 32-bit
- you can't install 32-bit drivers on a 64-bit system

The problem is not so much that Windows has changed but that the scanner manufacturers have not supplied 64-bit drivers for their older hardware.

[mattb]

Virtual PC (and Windows 7 XP mode) will only run on the top versions of Windows 7 (Professional and Ultimate). It's a true virtual solution running as a 32-bit system. There should be no problem with the drivers.

Windows 7 also has a "compatability" option where you can execute a program as though it was running under an older version of Windows (XP, even Windows 95). However if you're running a 64-bit version of Windows 7:

- you must install the right drivers to make your scanner hardware work
- the drivers for XP are 32-bit
- you can't install 32-bit drivers on a 64-bit system

The problem is not so much that Windows has changed but that the scanner manufacturers have not supplied 64-bit drivers for their older hardware.

Right. I'm thinking of the new PC scenario which would be likely to come with Win7 x64 these days. Good reminder about the Pro/Ultimate versions. I forget that sometimes because I only use Enterprise (which I think is the same as Ultimate). Why bother with Home if you have a MSDN subscription?

We went through a similar struggle when making the jump from 3.1 to 95, and then 95/98 to XP. It seems to just come with the territory when making major OS changes. At least we have virtualization options now. Takes way less space than the old solution which was keep the old box around!