Getting to the bottom of XP Mode

This morning a coworker sent me this article from TechRepublic entitled "10 Reasons Why Windows 7's XP Mode is a Big Deal" and asked me if I found it to be correct.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=926

Since I've been using the Windows 7 Release Candidate from the day it was made available on my home PC, he wanted my take. Here was my reply on the question of correctness:

Yes and no. The “It solves compatibility problems” point is only half right. You are actually running an entire virtual machine in the background when you launch a Virtual XP application so there is a ton of overhead involved and no direct access to the hardware such as your video card. That means if you have a stack of old games laying around and you think XP Mode is going to let you play them, you’d be wrong. Anecdotally I would say that application compatibility was greatly improved with Windows 7 anyway. It was designed for IT departments so that they can get away from supporting XP on their network just to keep compatibility with old productivity software.

The upgrades to Virtual PC points are pretty accurate.

“It’s a way to modernize XP” is way off, the XP virtual machine is exactly the same as a regular XP installation with the exception that you would have to get through the Windows 7 firewall first. That’s assuming the user has it enabled (it is by default, but some people turn it off).

The rest is mostly about support for XP coming from Microsoft which is again way off. The end of life date for XP still hasn’t changed and this just provides a stop gap solution for IT so that they can get away from the old and insecure XP. It gives a larger window of opportunity for them to find a new product or have the developers update their software to be compatible with Windows 7. There is a small grain of truth to everything here, but it seems mostly like a fluff piece. Another thing that he fails to mention is that XP Mode will only be available to Windows 7 Professional and higher, otherwise you will need your own licensed copy of XP to install into a virtual machine yourself if you want that functionality.

Bottom line:
Is XP Mode a big deal? Yes.
Is it a big enough deal to warrant 10 bullet points? No.