Re: OT--Win7 and disk partitions

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "Patricia M. Godfrey"
 on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:16:12 -0400


> There was a lot
> of back and forth then about W7, and the consensus seems to be
> that Xy (and NB) will run fine under the 32-bit version, but with
> 64-bit, you need some virtualization technique. And that's a
> complexity I for one would rather avoid.

Why? Don't imagine that things are going to get easier, because
they aren't. Virtualization is a _permanent_ solution. You
install it as automatically as you install Firefox or Acrobat.
I hear that this VirtualXP plug-in for Win7 (not to be confused
with VirtualPC or XP Compatibility Mode) is just the XP kernel
and not a whole tedious real-life XP installation rigmarole, is
a snap to install, and your apps "just run" (an
always-suspicious statement). Moreover, I read that the XP
plug-in environment is Win7-aware, and vice versa. My third and
last question -- the *most* important thing, which I've not read
about -- is what happens when you shell to DOS from your 16-bit
app: do you have a full DOS shell with all native commands
available, is it a Win7 shell or an XP shell, can you install
your own utilities, and can you "see" the whole Win7 file
system? If not, I would go with VPC or VMware and install a
minimal Win2K machine, and link all the Win7 drives read/write.

Anyway it shakes out, you're going to have to do something along
these lines if you want to run XyWrite on a 64-bit box. By the
time you get around to it, there'll be plenty of knowledge and
answers. Right now, we're short.

Steve Siebert has been saying for years that he wanted to take
NB to 32-bit, but his end-of-year letter to customers and plea
for $$$ seemed to say that it was still somewhat distant.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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