I have a few questions I could add here that are bound to come up sooner or later.
1)With integration enabled buring data to removable media remains a problem in the XP Mode while printer support and access to usb devices is seen in the final version. The floppy and dvd drive items seen on other VMs and custom installs to vhd remain unavailable however.
In virtual PC (the underlying technology for XP Mode), virtual Server and HyperV optical drives are presented as read only devices , data has to be copied to a remote client or to the host computer for writing .
It is worth distinguishing Printer and USB support. Printer support is provided through the Remote Desktop connection (which is what applications use in XP mode) but when connecting to Windows XP each printer needs to configured - the driver selected and the Terminal Services (TS) port chosen . A USB device can be mapped though to single a virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC (but not Hyper-V). This device is then unavailable to the hosts OS, so this is useful for cameras (for an Example see http://edge.technet.com/Media/Windows-XP-mode-for-Windows-7/ ) but not for printers. The settings dialog for Virtual PC allows a DVD drive in the VM to mapped to an ISO image file or a physical drive on the host computer, Virtual Floppy disk (VFD) files have been removed from this dialog
2)Visual capabilities already touched on a little is any way to enhance the virtual video card memory. Sound takes a back seat secondary role for things like multimedia and addon devices like tuner cards being unavailable while sound is still heard through the host OS.
Inside a VM the sound and graphics support is fairly basic, sound can be brought back to the host OS when connecting using remote desktop (which is what applications use in XP mode) the host graphics card is bypassed. There is no way to route a microphone on the host to the sound card in the VM, but it should be possible use a USB sound device.
3)IE security concerns since cooecting online while in the XP Mode is readily available. Despite being in a virtaul machine the integrated components still allows support for access to internal drives where virues and other malwares could end up being transfered over.
This is true –IE7 or IE8 are intrinsically more secure than IE6 (and are more secure still when run on Vista or Windows XP). With MEDV there is an additional level of integration which allows only defined URLs to be accessed in IE6 and all others are diverted back to the host OS : customers who need XP support on many desktops should be using MEDV – not the small business oriented XP-Mode. In addition Virtual PC allows the connection of host drives to disabling under the settings for integration components. There is a wider question of the risks which stem from having user controlled virtual machines – and this is something which MEDV is intended to address
4)One other odd question to add here would running an emulator like DOSBox on the XP Mode for even older legacy 9x-ME type apps. When going to mount C through DOSBox as well as a program's folder no results are seen while the Dos window appears as that would.
