Bu now you have probably heard about Virtual XP Mode that will be built into Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Virtual XP mode is designed to allow the installation and execution of applications that do not run natively in Windows 7, but work in Windows XP. This feature is really going to be geared toward the smaller businesses. For medium and larger enterprises, MED-V is going to be a better fit for dealing with Windows Vista and 7 incompatibilities since you can centrally build, deploy, update and manage application packages with it.

For those who want to check out Virtual XP Mode, you will need to install Virtual PC on your Windows 7 machines and then download and install the Virtual XP Mode package which you can get from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0e8fa9b3-c236-4b77-be26-173f032f5159

What’s really great about Virtual XP Mode and MED-V is when you install an Virtual XP Application, it shows in the start menu like any other non-virtualized application. When the user launches the application, they don’t get a Virtual PC desktop – so you don’t have to worry about the desktop within a desktop confusion. All the user sees is an application that looks like all of their other applications running on the machine. Cool.