Windows 7 and Virtualisation

Now that Windows 7 is now almost fully ready to go we are getting asked about the system requirements.

While the requirements for basic functions are similar to Vista, the reality is that with a more substantial machine you will get a much better experience. Now with the new version of Virtual PC there is a REQUIREMENT for hardware virtualisation support. What is interesting about this is the number of systems an processors that do not support this.

So far we know that every machine we have supplied with Vista has hardware virtualisation support, but we are finding out that a lot of other people have not been so lucky. Most of the cheap netbooks do not support this as do some of the cheaper models from the popular brands.

We are now moving to a point where we have more Windows 7 systems than Windows XP systems across our offices and it has been an interesting migration. Now the technologies of Windows Server 2008 are starting to shine and there are some interesting performance gains.

The next step is to wait for the public Beta testing of the next version of Office as that will have another major impact on our clients.