Microsoft has released a release candidate of Windows XP Mode, their Virtual PC based solution to provide nearly 100% compatibility with XP.  Sounds pretty good, right?

Well yes, it does.

This technology is especially promising to me at work.  We have several tools that proved nigh impossible to run in Vista such that we have continued to use XP on many of our machines.  Last week, I installed Windows 7 with the hopes the XP mode could iron some of these issues out.

The good news is that I haven’t found any mission critical applications that require it.  The bad news is XP mode has some glaring limitations, at least the small-business single install license seems to.

First of all, installing Windows XP Mode on a multi-user machine does not work like one might expect. It seems only to be available for the user who installed it.  For my application, this is not very useful.  We have 4 shifts that use this machine 24/7/365.  If XP mode offers us anything at all, it will only be able to do so if all users have the same access.  I believe it may be possible to do this if seperate VMs are employed but this is also very inefficient as that would require 4 VMs, 4 installations of miscellanious XP tools, etc.  Not very useful.  For this reason, I have not attempted this method yet.

Secondly, the installed VM is a completely separate PC on the network. It does not piggy back the host operating system’s domain credentials.  It is possible to join the underlying VM  to the domain but there again, this is no help in a multi-user environment.  This also creates additional computer objects in active directory.

Both of these limitations are very disappointing.  Fortunately, for what it does, it does it well. Applications are very responsive and behave as expected.

Startup times are sluggish but can you really expect anything different?

Microsoft is releasing an enterprise version of XP mode that may address some of these issues. We’ll have to see.

I spent sometime resurrecting my beloved media center from the neglect it suffered this summer.  True to my eclectic way of going through hobbies like a womanizer goes through women, I had nearly talked myself out of doing anything further with the machine.  I even contemplated completely abandoning it.

Fortunately, shorter days and cooler (albeit slight) weather has returned me to my senses.  All of those televisions shows I bid adieu to in May are drawing nigh.  I can see the silhouette of season premieres appearing on the horizon, galloping like wild horses.

With this new sense of urgency I decided the best approach would be to simply backup everything and start fresh.  I used the Windows Easy File and Settings Transfer utility for the first time. It smoothly backed up everything to one gigantic, 175 GB file on my external hard drive.  As my media center has been mostly non-functional for months I decided it would also be a good idea to skip backing up all of those shows I recorded last Winter/Spring and will never watch again.

Faced with the decision of whether or not to install the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows 7 I made the decision to give 64 bit a chance.  I have never done this before due to my fear that plugin and driver support for x64 will be weaker.  The thirst for a new experience helped me over this hurdle however.

All of this being said, the installation and setup were completely without hitch.  I did not find any plugins or drivers lacking x64 support.  Except, that is, FrontView.

FrontView is notoriously out of date, the last update being released 11/20/2006.  In fact, before I even installed Windows I did some preliminary research as to whether or not it would work.  I found no report concerning Windows 7, but I did find one report that it did not work with Vista 64 bit.  As alternatives exist I decided to proceed.

To my surprise, FrontView did install and connecting to my LCD required no effort on my part. It simply does not track media center’s session data.  It simply displays the default text/time.  A few hours of troubleshooting proved fruitless. As it stands I have posted on TheGreenButton in hopes that someone else has already tried this and succeeded.

Sadly, not only have FrontView’s developers refused to release updates they also ignore support requests. Something I figured out a few e-mails ago.  It would not be an issue if I hadn’t already paid for the pro version of their software.

I do not understand why some invest hundreds of hours into developing a product only to abandon it once a user base forms.

I can appreciate the time and effort required by even small projects, but developers have some responsibility to their projects, especially if they continue to sell them and advertise their support of them.