Kristof Rennen’s Blog

After moving to Windows 7 a few days ago, I already found a great new feature which allows users to virtualize applications from a Windows XP machine to a Windows 7 machine.

By using this new feature, users have the possibility to install Windows Xp only applications, and run them from their Windows 7 desktop right away.

In this post I will show you how you can get this kick-ass feature up and running. Please take into account, that this feature is still in beta at this moment.

Getting The Stuff

To get this feature up and running following downloads are needed:

• Windows Virtual PC Beta
• Windows XP Mode Beta

To be able to use this features, your computer should support Hardware Virtualization which can be enable or disabled in the BIOS setup.
More information can be found here.

Installing The Stuff

Nothing special is needed to install both the Windows Virtual PC Beta and Windows XP Mode Beta.

Windows 7 asks you to reboot your computer after the installation of the first application, but you can just continue installing the second one without any problems.

The installers will create 2 separate directories:

• Windows Virtual PC
• Virtual Windows XP

The second directory looks more or less like a regular Virtual PC 2007 directory:

The Windows XP is installed into a .vhd file, which is also used when using Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server.

Starting It Up

When you first start up the Virtual Windows XP, you are asked for a username and password which will furthur on be used to automatically login to the XP machine when needed.

The status of the Virtual Machine can always be checked using the dedicated Virtual Machines directory. You can see the name of the machine, its status, assigned memory and primary disk location.

By double clicking the machine in the list, it is started automatically:

When the machine has finished booting, you have a clean Windows XP machine to work on:

Virtualizing Applications

To tryout the application virtualizing, I will be using Firefox since I don’t install this on my windows 7 since I’m always using IE8 ;-).

The first step to take is installing the application inside the virtual windows xp as any other regular application.

That’s all there is to it. The application has now been installed inside the virtual windows xp, but can now be virtualized from within Windows 7.

If you open the start menu of your windows 7, there is a new folder containing all the Virtual Windows XP Applications:

Starting A Virtual Application

Any virtual application can now be started directly from the Windows 7 start menu. Before an application can be started, the running virtual machine needs to be closed down.

Also when you want to start up the virtual machine, all virtual applications need to be closed down, so its always one of them both running.

If you don’t close down the machine, you will be prompted to do so when you start up an application:

When starting the application, the virtual environment gets initialized.

After the initialization has completed, our virtual application is running and can be used as any regular application.

Conclusion

Virtualizing applications on Windows 7 really is a powerful and easy to use mechanism to run incompatible applications.

I already needed it once to be able to install some software which was incompatible with both Vista and Windows 7 even when using the available compatibility modes.

Kristof Rennen Software Microsoft, Windows 7

Last week I finally got rid of my windows vista on both my home computer and my computer at work, after suffering from too many problems for too long.

Even though Windows 7 is still a Release Candidate, I took my chances and installed it on both my machines.

I must say I’m really happy with the change. Everything is running smoother than on my vista machine without any problems.
Certainly network access and file operations have been improved a lot, which is certainly handy if you have to move or copy a huge amount of files.

I will certainly post about Windows 7 in the future, after some more experimenting.

The final version of Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing (RTM) in the second half of July and will be in stores on the 22nd of october.
I really can’t wait to make my final upgrade to Windows 7 in a few weeks.

Kristof Rennen Software Microsoft, Windows 7

The last few days have been great for the Microsoft Surface in belgium.

Last sunday, VTM used a Microsoft Surface during the election show, to visualize the results.
You can read more details in my previous posts:

• VTM Goes Surface
• Microsoft Surface At The Belgian Elections

On monday VTM already launched its second surface application:

 

This application is used to browse and manipulate belgian newspapers and magazines during the late news.
In the following weeks / months, this will be a fixed item in the late news to show the headlines of the next day in the same format as the real printed papers.

With those 2 applications, VTM really gave the surface a great start in Belgium. Let’s hope a lot of great application will follow in the future.

Kristof Rennen Development Microsoft, Surface

In my previous post I already mentioned VTM using a Microsoft Surface to give an overview of the 2009 election results.

There is already a video available, posted by Luc Van de Velde of Microsoft:

Kristof Rennen Development Microsoft, Surface

Yesterday, elections took place in Belgium.
As with any election show, TV stations always do their best to impress people watching as much as they can.

VTM chose to use the Microsoft Surface during their show as the first one in belgium using this new technology for a real purpose.

The application itself consisted of 3 scenes used by the presenter to go through the results as they were gathered throughout the day:

• A startup scene
• A coalition scene
• An evolution scene

The startup scene

The startup screen showed the logo of “De Stem Van Vlaanderen”, the same one as used on the plasma screens behind the presenters.

The coalition scene

This scene was used to navigate through all the possible coalition combinations between the 7 big factions.

An overview of all factions is shown, which can be expanded or collapsed showing the total number of seats reached by that faction.

By dragging the faction itself into a pie, 3D pie pieces visualize the possible coalitions.

The evolution scene

This scene is used to show the evolution of factions and cartels between the elections of 2004, 2007 and 2009.

By dragging the title of the faction into the bar below, the results of that faction are shown.

By using different discs the results from all the factions could be visualized in an interactive fashion.

This shows us how nicely a Surface can be integrated into any environment, and according to me the application really looks nice so they gain my vote

Let’s hope they will come up with various nice applications in the future.

Kristof Rennen Development Microsoft, Multi-Touch, Surface