Something exciting about the Windows 7 Release Candidate is Virtual XP Mode.

However before you get too excited first check that your CPU supports Virtualisation. You can get advice about this on the link below.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/configure-bios.aspx

Moving on…

For users of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate you can download Virtual PC 2007 and a fully licensed XP Virtual machine.

Virtual PC is nothing new, the bundling of the Free licensed XP Virtual Machine is and well as the interoperability between the host and guest operating system. Drag and drop and application sharing.

In English in Windows 7 I can use software installed in my Windows XP Virtual machine but outside of the virtual machine itself.

Step1) Download and install the files you need.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Step2) Log into your Virtual machine.

From within the environment you have a fully working Windows XP Virtual machine you can run in a Window or full screen.

Step3) Install Applications in your Virtual Machine.

In this example I chose to install an older  legacy version of Firefox 2.0.

Step4) If I wanted to run the virtual Firefox 2.0 in my Windows 7 environment I would need to shutdown my Virtual XP. Then in in Windows 7 you click on Start > All Programs > Windows Virtual PC > Virtual Windows XP Applications. The installed applications will be shown here.

When you select an application this then starts the Virtual Machine in the background and your application will run seamlessly on top of Windows 7.

Tip: To access some of the default Virtual XP Windows applications for example IE6 from outside your Virtual machine right lick on Start (in the Virtual Machine) Choose Explore with all users, make a shortcut to IE6  and it will appear in the Windows 7 start menu and IE6 will run on top of Windows 7.

Problems

The only problem I had was when I tried to install Microsoft Office 2000 in my Virtual XP. I got a Windows Protection error that would not allow the install to continue.

Observations

Sometimes the loading of the Virtual XP can be slow but this pretty much delivers what it sets out to do and this kind of approach will allow Microsoft to ditch some of the legacy support holding them back.

Only time will tell how useful and practical this turns out to be, as of today I remote desktop to real Windows XP PC for legacy applications. In theory Virtual XP Mode would allow me using only 1 PC.

Earlier this morning Microsoft went live with the Window 7 public beta of Windows 7 RC Build 7100.

It is available on the link below in either a:

32Bit 2.36GB Download or 64Bit 3.05GB Download.

I would imagine this is going to be the most popular public Beta trial in history so the link below may get swamped.

I still wouldn’t recommend any Beta software to people not confident in installing Operating Systems and drivers etc.

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Machine: Dell XPS 420, E8400 CPU, 8gb Ram Intel X-25-M SSD.

Bios Time: This is the amount of time in seconds spend in the Machines Bios prior to loading the Operating System.

I finally got around to taking some boot speed times as I was pretty sure this was slower than I was expecting.

Back in February 2009 I did some quick tests on the Windows 7 Build 7000 x86 version. I  compared it to  XP and Vista. The post bios boot speeds were considerably quicker at 13.43 seconds.

Sadly I no longer have the machine I used to benchmark back in Feb so I cant do a like for like but my current machine had the same CPU and same SSD hard disk (Intel X-25-m).

I know comparing x86 Build 7000 to x64 Build 7100 isn’t a fare comparison especially as the machines are different.  I am however curious why the extra 26 seconds.

Shims can’t slow it down this much or at least I hope not.

I can see a Windows 7-7100 x86 re-format on this rig in the near future just so i can do a proper comparison.

On a Desktop PC I can live with longer boot time but not on a Laptop for instance.

Once the OS has loaded there aren’t any performance issues I can detect as a user.

I shall update this post in the future.

Update: 05/05/2009

I did a reformat and a full comparison x86 to x64 7100 boot times on the same hardware. I found that the boot times were near identical.

I then did a 32bit build 7000 to 32bit build 7100 and found the 7000 build to be 21% faster booting around 11 seconds faster. Any other discrepancies are down to the differences in the machines I used to benchmark.

I installed Build 7000 on 3 or 4 machines. I found it fine for an early Beta and when I did encounter problems I wasn’t too bothered.

Skip forward a couple of months and I have started with a clean install of the Windows 7 Release candidate Build 7100.

My test machine is a Dell XPS 420 running an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0Ghz) with 8gig of Ram as my intention is go x64 only any legacy applications can be run in XP Mode (more later on that).

Install

The installation took about 20 mins and 100% of my Dell hardware was detected correctly.

The Windows 7 RC is time limited but Microsoft have been generous enough to allow 13 months grace period prior to the expiration of the Beta on June 1st 2010.

The install foot print with Office 2007 SP2 installed is about 24gig (remember this includes an 8gb swap file due to the size of the ram being used.

In my case that 8gb swap file is probably overkill and a quarter of that or less would be sufficient. Ill tweak it later while looking at any SSD optimisations.

This foot print size would only be a problem for users of say a 32gb SSD drives. My install is running on an Intel X25-M which has a capacity of 80gig.

Performance

This test machine is pretty well specified and runs Windows 7 very smoothly. I am running Dual Monitor and the support for this is very straight forward and just works.

The boot speed seems slightly slower than i was expecting but this could be the x64 and 8gig of ram swap file.

Annoyances

Google Chrome doesn’t work out of the box so you have to get on the developer channel and use the Dev version. The only problem I have found is when you create a Gmail Application short cut you cannot close it by double clicking the top left.

Tip: I cant remember how well task bar jump lists were implemented in build 7000 but in 7100 they are really useful. All you need to do is right click over the taskbar icons to see the jump list (see Pic below for IE8 and Excel).

Over the next few days I will rack up some hours testing the robustness of this release.

Well my one month sabbatical from tech blogging turned into two months in the blink of an eye.

It has been good to stop for a while and reflect a bit.

The things i like about tech blogging are numerous.

I love technology. I like talking and writing about it and in particular sharing knowledge.

I do appreciate the feedback (comments and e-mails) from the people who contact me.

Several people contacted me wondering if I was perchance trapped under something heavy and couldn’t get to a keyboard.

In reality I was waiting for something exciting to happen in technology…….