Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
Intel Microsoft Windows Technology Hardware

Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement 205

Posted by kdawson
from the marketecture-in-action dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This week, Microsoft published a patch that allows Windows XP Mode to run on PCs without hardware-assisted virtualization. Which begs the question: Why the bizarro requirement in the first place? Was it an honest attempt to deliver an 'optimal' user experience? Or simply a concession to the company's jilted lover, Intel Corporation — 'a kind of apology for royally screwing up with the whole Windows Vista “too fat to fit” debacle,' as the blog post puts it."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement More

Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement

Comments Filter:

  • My best guess.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jawtheshark (198669) * <slashdot AT jawtheshark DOT com> on Friday March 19 2010, @11:52AM (#31538974) Homepage Journal
    The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled. The fact that one of the major CPU manufacturers didn't, is most likely what bit Microsoft in the ass. Still, some OEMs also are at fault, I think: Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

  • The bigger announcement from MS today (Score:2, Interesting)

    by afidel (530433) on Friday March 19 2010, @11:59AM (#31539128)
    The bigger announcement was that they were dropping the stupid VDI licensing thing. Paying an extra $23/year on top of the outrageous fees we already pay for Select and Open licenses just for the privileged of using the desktop OS licenses in a virtual environment was just stupid and I'm very glad it was dropped, might make it a bit easier to find a positive ROI on a VDI project now.

  • Re:My best guess.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mister_playboy (1474163) on Friday March 19 2010, @12:01PM (#31539176)

    The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

    At least it could be turned on. Sony computers with processors that support virtualization have the feature disabled in the BIOS and there is no option to enable it.

  • non VT runs dog slow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alen (225700) on Friday March 19 2010, @12:14PM (#31539420)

    i've run the desktop version of VMWare on my laptop and it's very slow compared to the VT version of Windows XP Mode on the same laptop.

    it's the same old complaints. people want a feature but if it's not supported in hardware and runs extremely slow they will scream on the internets how stupid microsoft is for making it so slow on 6 year old hardware that otherwise runs Windows 7 very well

  • Re:My best guess.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by operagost (62405) on Friday March 19 2010, @12:28PM (#31539668) Homepage Journal
    Or to turn it off when it's already on... BULLET TIME

  • Gah, politics (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 19 2010, @12:42PM (#31539896)

    One reason I'm glad I don't use Windows is because I don't have to get caught on the short end of the bullshit politics stick. Even if something shitty happens with my favorite distro/browser/app, there's others to choose from.

  • Begs != raises (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna (970587) on Friday March 19 2010, @01:13PM (#31540464) Journal
    The phrase "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question", or "makes us ask the question", though lots of people are using it in that sense. Begs the question means, it assumes the as true what it intends to prove. The Latin phrase "petitio principii" means, the answer (or the answerer) begs (petitions) the questioner to be accepted as true, to concede what is being contested.

    But this mistake is so common, so many people are using it this way, it is high time we start de linking "begs the question" from "petitio principii".

Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.