Except for when Vista won’t work with your old accessories.... or asks for an update... or pops up the UAC when the VM wants something.
And we’ve experimented with this at work. Brand new Dell Vostro 1500 running Vista Biz - the computer is 25% slower running XP as a VM under Vista than it is running XP natively.
Care to explain that?
Import them directly to the VM as raw devices (that's the default anyway) and the XP drivers will see them.
> or asks for an update...
Once a month on Tuesday? Big deal. Windows updates are annoying but not that frequent.
> or pops up the UAC when the VM wants something.
I haven't seen that problem. No comment at the moment.
> And we’ve experimented with this at work. Brand new Dell Vostro 1500 running Vista Biz - the computer is 25% slower running XP as a VM under Vista than it is running XP natively. Care to explain that?
Sure. Virtualization overhead, and the inherent slowness of Vista.
Look, I prefer to run my VMs over Linux or Mac OS-X. I sometimes run them over XP. They're more efficient.
But get back to the original question -- the guy wants a NEW NOTEBOOK that only runs Vista drivers. How does he run XP on it?
My answer is not meant to be a perfect or optimal answer to EVERY question. It's meant to be a workable answer to his question. He runs XP in a VM over the Vista that talks to his chosen hardware. OK?
Me? I choose to avoid Vista-only hardware wherever possible.
So there is no good answer here, except for hardware manufacturers to continue to support drivers for newer machines with XP installed.
(dayglored -- not trying to play devil's advocate here; just trying to understand the problems/solutions to this issue. If I buy a new computer with Vista, wipe the hard drive, install XP and continue to use existing XP-compatible hardware, I should be o.k. It's only the newer gear that's affected if a manufacturer is stupid enough to not provide a driver for the most popular operating system currently in use. Definitely buyer beware.)