Windows 7's "XP Mode" has potential to be a support nightmare

You might be aware of Microsoft's decision to ease the transition to Windows 7 by using virtualization to provide a Windows XP mode (XPM). The idea here is to remove another potential barrier to small businesses concerned about their ability to migrate existing or legacy applications to the next iteration of the Windows operating system.

However, some have cautioned that this might not be a good thing, as organizations might simply use the availability of XPM as an opportunity to skip testing with Windows 7 altogether. Gartner analyst Michael Silver has even come forward to warn that Windows XP Mode will give a false sense of security. He elaborated, "What happens in 2014, when XP isn't supported anymore? I think companies will be much better off if they make all their applications run on Windows 7."

In a way, the problem of the XPM "safety net" would be that users are actually discouraged to stay on Windows XP, eliminating any urgency to move toward newer versions of Windows. As a former system administrator, yet another support headache I can see would be attempts to instruct users on how to access XPM for legacy applications. Of course, we will have to wait for more details on the exact implementation before we are able to comment more on this aspect.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

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