Microsoft has an announcement on their Press site with regards to new features with Desktop Virtualization. As I travel across Saskatchewan this week doing the Windows 7 Deep Dives, one of the topics is Windows XP mode within Windows 7.  Windows XP mode had required hardware virtualization to work correctly. That left me in the cold on my little Toshiba laptop. It works great but lack virtualization technology which meant that I couldn’t run Windows XP mode. As part of the release today, they have announced that you won’t need Virtualization Technology to use Windows XP mode.

This is a good change. It allows those who would like to go upgrade to Windows 7 but have applications that need Windows XP the ability to upgrade and continue to keep the apps running in an XP environment. For me, its more about being able to demo the Windows XP mode than actually utilizing it, all my applications work under Windows 7.

The full press release can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/mar10/03-18DesktopVirtPR.mspx