The folks behind the Windows Virtual PC Blog asked me to help spread awareness of its existence: so here you go! On there they talk about the desktop virtualisation product and XP Mode. I talked about XP Mode in the blog before. It’s a free XP SP3 VM that you can run on the professional, ultimate and enterprise editions of Windows 7 for application compatibility when things like the ACT 5.5 kit won’t work or aren’t suitable. You install your legacy application into the XP VM and you run it from your Windows 7 interface. When the application starts up it runs in a seamless window, hiding the presence of the VM. A feature added since I talked about it (or I didn’t notice it) is something people have been begging for in Hyper-V but don’t have yet: support for USB devices. I showed that in action at the MS Ireland comunity launch event in Cork where I plugged in a BitLocker-To-Go protected USB stick into the XP Mode VM and accessed the secure contents.
You still need to treat the VM like a typical hardware machine on you network, e.g. domain membership, antivirus, patching, etc. Larger organisations with Software Assurance might want to look at the paid for per desktop MDOP which includes MED-V, a way to centrally manage and configure the VM images on the desktop network.