Today we’ll continue talking about Windows 7, this time with a bit of a focus on the transition from Windows XP.

When Vista first came out, there was a lot of fanfare about compatibility problems between XP applications and Vista. Vista was a big enough change from XP that a lot of applications didn’t really work properly. Microsoft, in realizing this, has made changes to address this specific concern for many businesses with Windows 7.

One of the changes they made is to introduce what they’re calling XP mode. The short breakdown is this: if you have a newer processor that supports virtualization, and Windows 7 business edition (or professional, or whatever they finally decide to call it) or Ultimate, you’ll be able to run Windows XP in a virtualized environment (for more on what exactly this means, check out last week’s article explaining virtualization).

In short, Windows 7 will have native support for all things XP.

This one can be a big game changer for business. When Vista was released, it was plagued by incompatibilities. People making the changefrom XP to Vista ran into a brick wall of problems, because the way the operating system interacted with the programs had fundamentally changed. And the software developers hadn’t accounted for it.

In making this functionality available, Microsoft is essentially saying “if you have a new-ish computer, we’ll make sure that what happened with Vista doesn’t happen again”. For business, this is an important step; as a business person, you don’t have time for downtime, or problems making your software run. This game-changer helps ensure that you won’t run into that problem.

Next week we’ll be talking about how to tell if your computer can pull of this “virtualization” thing we’ve spoken about. And in the meantime, start talking to your tech support provider about what a change like this might mean for you.