I’ll admit that the noise around the new Windows 7 XP Mode hasn’t really been high on my radar of important things to be concerned about; but that doesn’t change the fact that for some this is important. However there is also a lot of confusion among Windows users as to whether or not this XP Mode thing is something they need to be concerned about.

If you are finding yourself in that camp then maybe this post by Stephen L. Rose on The Windows Blog might help – no promises but your never know.

Well, let me start with actually talking a bit about [Windows] XP Mode.

We introduced Windows Virtual PC in Windows 7 with new capabilities, such as support for USB (Universal Serial Bus) devices, and seamlessly integrating the Virtual PC applications into the Windows 7 desktop and making them available for the users from the start menu.  Windows XP Mode is just a preconfigured Windows XP virtual image and it is available for any user that has Windows 7 Pro [Professional] and above.  The whole Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small business users run Windows XP application on Windows 7 in case that the application would not run on a Windows 7 operating system.

You can read the whole post over on the Windows Blog.