Windows 7: Work

Posted on 15 Jul 2009 at 15:35

Windows 7 offers a plethora of features for professionals that should be enough to tempt businesses to ditch the ageing XP at last

Microsoft is still licking the wounds from the beating it took over Windows Vista's application and hardware compatibility. Consequently, right from the very first official unveiling of Windows 7, the company has been at pains to stress the measures it's taking to ensure existing software and devices will work from the get-go.

One small but significant measure it's already deployed is to leave the version number of the OS almost unchanged. This might be Windows 7, but as far as software is concerned, it will be known as Windows 6.1. Why? Because many applications and drivers are set to check the version number of software before installation to ensure they're not installed on incompatible OSes. As Vista and Windows 7 share the same core code, Microsoft has decided to merely nudge up the version number (Windows Vista was 6) so that applications are tricked into thinking it's Vista they're dealing with.

That sleight of hand will help ensure that the overwhelming majority of commercial software written in the past two or three years will work seamlessly with Windows 7. But what about those bespoke, legacy apps that many businesses rely on?

The rabbit Microsoft pulled from the hat for the launch of the Release Candidate is Windows XP Mode. This downloadable add-on provides a virtual version of Windows XP SP3 for Windows 7, allowing companies to install legacy apps but run them as if they were native Windows 7 software.

The download comes in two parts: Microsoft's Virtual PC software - which manages the virtual machines in Windows 7 - and Windows XP Mode itself, which is essentially a fully licensed version of Windows XP SP3. Once installed, you simply select Virtual Windows XP from the Start menu, install your legacy app as you would normally on XP, and it's ready to go. The clever part is that the legacy application can then be accessed straight from the Windows 7 Start menu or even pinned to the new taskbar. After installation, the virtual OS becomes practically invisible, as the application opens in its own window, just like a native app would. It's incredibly slick.

Note that the virtual Windows XP OS is allocated only 256MB of RAM by default - we found boosting that up to 1GB in the Virtual Machine settings menu gave performance a massive lift

There are a couple of drawbacks, however. Although the virtualised legacy apps behave like any other Windows 7 program, they can take a couple of minutes to get going, as Windows boots the virtual XP OS in the background. Performance isn't as snappy as running the apps on a normal XP desktop either. Note that the virtual Windows XP OS is allocated only 256MB of RAM by default - we found boosting that up to 1GB in the Virtual Machine settings menu gave performance a massive lift.

There are also reasonably stringent hardware requirements to run XP Mode. Aside from a minimum of 2GB of RAM, the PC's processor must have virtualisation support (either Intel VT or AMD-V), which has to be enabled in the BIOS before installation. That rules out a number of mainstream processors from both Intel and AMD, including members of the Core 2 Duo family and AMD's Sempron processors. You'll want to check compatibility before upgrading to Windows 7 or buying a new PC.

Nevertheless, XP Mode does provide an elegant safety net for firms that want to take advantage of Windows 7, but are clinging to XP for business-critical apps.

Bigger firms operating a Windows Server 2008 environment already have an application virtualisation offering - MED-V - which offers features such as centralised deployment and management that XP Mode doesn't.

Extra encryption

BitLocker first reared its head in Windows Vista, but the scope of the encryption software has been extended in Windows 7. Since Vista's launch, lost or stolen USB drives have become an enormous security liability.

Microsoft's response is BitLocker To Go - encryption for external USB drives (either flash or hard disk), which is activated with little more effort than a right-click on your chosen drive in the Computer menu. Encryption is by no means a speedy process: a modest 1GB flash drive took in excess of 15 minutes to encrypt, although you can carry on working while Windows beavers away.

Once encrypted, the drive can be only accessed by entering a lengthy password or (if your company supports them) swiping a smart card. You can set your encrypted drive to work on your regular work PC without entering the password each time.

The BitLocker-protected drives work on XP, Vista and Windows 7 PCs, although XP and Vista machines can only read and copy files from encrypted drives and not write to them. Macs are predictably befuddled by the whole affair and refuse to deal with BitLocker.

What happens if you forget your password? BitLocker To Go provides a 48-character recovery key, which can either be saved as a file on your work PC or printed out and (preferably) locked in a safe somewhere. The recovery key can be used on any PC, not only the one you used to encrypt the drive, which means IT departments can manage the entire recovery process (storage of the keys and data recovery) if they so wish.

BitLocker security for internal drives remains largely unchanged: you'll still need a TPM (trusted platform module), and you might want to encrypt the drive overnight, as even our modest 60GB drive took in excess of an hour-and-a-half to complete.

Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has once again decided to restrict BitLocker to the Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Windows 7, shamefully leaving the "small business-friendly" Professional version without a native encryption solution.