Tag Archives | XP Mode

Outlook and UAC and VirtualBox, oh my!

By on March 5, 2010 in How-To Geek

It’s been a busy week between finals at Florida Tech and a major problem with an article I wrote on running XP Mode in Virtual Box, so here’s your chance to catch up my How-to Geek articles if you’ve been waiting for me to post them here.

Outlook:

I wrote two articles about my favorite plugins for Outlook: Forgotten Attachment Detector and the Drop.io plugin.

Never Forget to Send an Email Attachment in Outlook

Send up to 100MB attachments with Outlook and drop.io

Windows:

Is IE 8 any good for web developers?  Check out a fun trick you can do with IE8 at:

Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

And then, Find your computer’s location with Windows 7 and Geosense

UAC is often unloved and misunderstood, which is why I wrote Understanding User Account Control in Windows 7

All work and no play …. well, let’s look at Window’s ancient ancestors!  Geek Fun: Virtualized old school Windows 3.11

And then, to continue my series on running XP Mode in extreme and unusual ways, I wrote an article on how to run XP Mode in VirtualBox.  Windows XP didn’t appear to activate correctly when users started trying to follow my directions, so we quickly went back to the drawing board.  Thankfully, MysticGeek at How-to Geek dug up a great way to still get XP Mode to work in Virtual Box via the VMLite plugin.  This integrates XP Mode with Windows 7 very nicely, including showing XP programs directly in your Windows 7 Start menu just like the official XP Mode.  Check this method out at Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin, and you can even still see my original infamous article if you’d like at How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (though remember, you won’t actually be able to activate XP Mode this way).

Books, books, and more books!

Microsoft press has the good habit of giving away free ebooks periodically, and they recently released a new on on their blog for free.  This book, Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft, offers some unique and interesting pointers to make your career more successful in any field.  Check out their blog post for more info, and download the book for free in PDF or XPS formats.

One more thing!

The neatest new download of the week was the new Opera 10.50.  It brings a sleek Aero UI and great Windows 7 integration to the most popular browser that no one uses (on the desktop anyhow).  This new version should help change that; it’s fast, pretty, and easy to use with streamlined menus.  But this wasn’t Opera’s only new release of the week; they also released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile.  Unlike previous versions that ran in Java, this version is a native Windows Mobile browser, includes tabbed browsing, and is amazingly fast.  Opera Mini was already my favorite browser on Windows Mobile (Chrome and IE8 tie on the desktop for me :) ), and this just made it even better.  Check them both out when you have a chance; you’ll enjoy it!

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Create your own XP Mode for 7 Home Premium and Vista!

By on February 23, 2010 in How-To Geek

My recent article on How-to Geek about running XP Mode without hardware virtualization got a lot of comments from people wanting to run XP Mode on other editions of Windows.  XP Mode is only licensed for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate, so if your computer is running 7 Home Premium or Vista you cannot run it.  But, if you have your own legal copy of XP, you can make your own XP Mode.  It’s actually very easy with VMware Player, and takes less steps than importing the standard XP Mode.  Check out my article at How-to Geek, which details all the steps involved and offers some tips on integrating your virtual XP with Vista or 7!

Create an XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Versions & Vista

This article was also listed at Lifehacker!  Check that out at:

Lifehacker: Create Your Own XP Mode for Any Version of Windows

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Run XP Mode without Hardware Virtualization

By on February 17, 2010 in How-To Geek

Several months ago I wrote about VMware’s release of VMware Player 3.0.  This was a major upgrade to VMware’s free desktop virtualization offering, adding support for creating virtual machines and running them in Unity mode.  Windows 7’s release, then on the other hand, boosted desktop virtualization’s position in the marketplace with XP Mode which brings a virtualized copy of XP to Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.  Many people have been disappointed that Windows Virtual PC, required to run XP Mode, also  requires hardware virtualization support.  If your computer doesn’t have it, then you simply can’t run XP Mode.

Or can you?  Thanks to VMware Player, you can actually still use XP mode even without hardware virtualization!  And, even if your computer can run Virtual PC, you may get better performance or features using VMware player.  Check out my article at How-To Geek for all the inside information on how to do this!

Run XP Mode on Windows 7 Machines Without Hardware Virtualization

This article was also featured on Lifehacker today! Check out the Lifehacker article:

Run XP Mode on Windows 7 Machines Without Hardware Virtualization

And check back soon … I’ve got a lot more articles about virtualization coming to How-to Geek!

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VMware Player 3.0: The Desktop Virtualization Wars Begin

By on October 29, 2009 in Reviews, Techinch

Windows 7 marks the shift of desktop virtualization programs from a tool for IT pros to a standard program on every desktop.  Virtualization software enables users to run additional operating systems, such as XP or Ubuntu, as a program right inside their standard desktop, which enables users to test new programs or run legacy programs in a separate OS.  Microsoft has offered a free desktop virtualization solution for Windows 2000 and newer ever since 2006 with the release of Virtual PC 2003, but still it was only commonly used by IT pros and computing enthusiasts.  However, with the release of Windows 7, Microsoft has made XP Mode, a virtual copy of XP running in Windows Virtual PC, a standard feature for Professional and higher editions.  Additionally, Windows Virtual PC is available as a free download for users of all editions of Windows 7, and any user can add their own operating system or migrate their old computer into it for free.  Finally, in the range of products that affects consumers without most knowing it, Microsoft has added hypervisor-based virtualization, Hyper-V, as a free component of Server 2008 and Server 2008 RT that can also be downloaded as a free standalone product.

While these moves are great for consumers, it has increasingly made Microsoft at odds with a company who has built their entire business around virtualization solutions: VMware.  Many consumers know VMware for their Fusion software, which allows Mac users to run Windows programs seamlessly in Mac OS X.  But that is far from their only product; VMware offers a wide range of desktop and server virtualization products.  Most of their products cost, and are often fairly expensive; this immediately puts them at odds with their larger rival who is giving away their virtualization products for free.

However, today VMware has struck back at Microsoft with this week’s release of VMware Player 3.0.  Although VMware Player formerly only let users run existing virtual machines, this new release allows users to create and run their own virtual machines, just like Windows Virtual PC does.  VMware Player also supports video acceleration, including Aero desktop effects, inside virtual machines.  And this product is totally free, which puts it in the same market as Microsoft’s Virtual PC.

It also puts VMware in closer competition with Sun’s VirtualBox, another free desktop virtualization offering which works on Windows and Mac OS X.  VirtualBox, while lacking the polish of their competition, offers advanced features such as Remote Desktop Protocol and snapshots of the virtual machine.

This competition has heated up over the past couple years, and now that consumers are starting to use virtualization on a daily basis, it only appears that the competition will increase.  So while Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Apple compete in the Browser Wars 2.0, a new tech war is brewing.  Consumers have benefited greatly from the competition in web browsers, as companies have worked harder to make their browsers faster, stable, and user-friendly.  It will be exciting to see what the competition in virtualization does to this exciting new branch of software!

Check out my comparison of desktop virtualization solutions at Digital Inspiration – http://www.labnol.org/software/free-virtualization-software-comparison/10968/

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