What's the point of XP Mode anyway?

Microsoft made XP Mode so that you can run XP applications from inside Windows 7. Ah... OK, doesn't Win 7 run XP applications anyway?

Let me check. I'm currently running Office 2003, OpenOffice 3.1, Quicken 2008, iTunes 8.1.1, ooVoo, (a video-conferencing program), and a host of other XP programs on Windows 7 on my Gateway DX4710 with its 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 6GBs of RAM. And, you know what? They're running just fine.

Sure, there are some XP programs that don't run well on Vista or Windows 7, like ah... ah... hmmm. You know, these days I really can't think of a single popular program that won't run on them.

This is a feature?

Oh, on native XP SP3, XP programs do tend to run faster on the exact same box, but they will run on Windows 7. So, tell me Microsoft, what's the point of XP Mode? To kill off XP?

This doesn't sound to me like it's going to do the job. As Preston Gralla notes in his review of XP Mode, XP Mode will only work if your CPU has hardware virtualization baked in with either Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) for Intel chips or AMD-V for AMD chips. Guess what, many of today's chips don't come with either one. In addition, XP Mode will only come on certain editions of Windows 7: Ultimate, Professional and Enterprise.

Listen. If you're really concerned about not being able to run XP-era applications, let me suggest you invest in downloading a copy of another virtualization program that doesn't require any special chip hardware. I recommend VirtualBox.

VirtualBox will not only let you run XP on top of Windows 7, it will also let you run Win 7 on top of XP, or Linux, or Mac OS X. or what-have you. It also won't cost you a single red-cent, it runs great, and it's not half-as-annoying to set up as XP Mode is.

Or, here's a thought, you could just stick with XP SP3. I'm just saying.