Daniel Dilger has posted a thoughtful and well reasoned summary of why he thinks Microsoft have got it all wrong with Windows 7 ( Why Windows 7 is The Next Zune ). Whether you are pro or anti-Microsoft I think you will find his argument pretty compelling. With the rise of OS X and Linux ( netbooks ) Microsoft are really beginning to see some solid competition and it is fairly clear that Windows 7 is not a get out of jail free card for Redmond.

Personally when I read about Windows 7′s new “XP mode” I thought maybe Microsoft had grasped the problem and were putting a sensible solution in place to enable them to free themselves from the shackles of backward compatibility without losing too many customers along the way ( clearly nothing innovative here as this is what Apple did by rolling OS 9 into OS X when it was released in 2000 ), however when I read the full gen on this and realised that this “slick” integration actually requires you to install Virtual PC and then XP and then Antivirus and firewall software for XP etc I was forced to concede that yet again Microsoft have completely missed the point !

Sorry Redmond but I think you have some tough times ahead and some tough decisions to make, and to be honest I think I agree with Daniel that from past history it is unlikely you will make the right ones.

Techbuzzwords.com have an interesting comparison of the performance of Windows 7 running on VMWare Fusion, Parallels and VirtualBox.

If you want to know which product is speediest ( at least at the moment ) this is a useful review. You should bear in mind however that Parallels and VMware have played leapfrog since first releasing their Mac solutions, overtaking each other with each new release ( competition in this case is delivering better products for the community )