Renée James, Intel’s software chief, mentioned  at Intel’s Investor Meeting 2011 at company headquarters in Santa Clara  that Windows 8 traditional would ship with a Windows 7 mode. Traditional  in this regard refers to the desktop version of the Windows 8 operating  system.
Users who are currently running Windows 7 will be  reminded of Windows XP mode and wonder if it will be anything like that  mode. The chance is that it will use the same virtualization technology  to offer access to Windows 7 in a virtual machine.
This raises the  question why such a mode is included in Windows 8. If you look at  Windows 7 and its Windows XP mode, you could say that it was added to  give customers and companies options to run pre-Vista software on  Windows 7.
Windows 7 Mode in Windows 8 on the other hand does not  seem to make lots of sense on first glance, considering that the two  operating systems will be closely related to each other.
There are  two explanations for this. First, Microsoft might introduce a feature  in Windows 8 that breaks compatibility somewhat, so that some  applications may no longer run on Windows 8. Windows 7 mode would then  be used by users and companies to get those applications running on  Windows 8.
The second option is purely marketing, that everyone  can go ahead and buy Windows 8 without waiting for the first SP1 to  arrive or to test application compatibility extensively. Why? Because  you can run all your apps in Windows 7 mode on the system right away. If  you have tested them under Windows 7, you can run them in Windows 8 as  well thanks to the virtual mode.
 Microsoft has said that recent comments from Intel software chief  Renée James on the next version of Windows were "factually inaccurate  and unfortunately misleading."
At Intel's Investor Meeting 2011 at the company's Santa Clara, California, headquarters on Tuesday, 
James told her keynote audience  that the upcoming versions of Windows that Microsoft will provide for  ARM-based systems will not run "legacy" applications. "Our competitors  will not be running legacy applications. Not now. Not ever," she said,  after referring to the next incarnation of Windows by its apparent code  name, Windows 8.
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 She also told the gathered investors that "Windows 8 traditional" – a  version of the new OS for x86 chips – will offer a "Windows 7 mode",  and that this version would allow users to run "all of their old  applications."
 She then indicated that Microsoft was developing four Windows  versions for ARM systems. "There will be four Windows 8 SoCs for ARM.  Each one will run for that specific ARM environment, and they will run  new applications or cloud-based applications," she said, referring to  system-on-a-chip architectures. "They are neither forward- nor  backward-compatible between their own architecture – different  generations of a single vendor – nor are they compatible across  different vendors. Each one is a unique stack."
When Microsoft 
announced its ARM versions of Windows at this January's Consumer Electronics Show, it 
mentioned only three ARM-system partners: Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.
On Wednesday, Microsoft took issue with James' comments – but it  declined to provide any clarification on what part or parts of her  comments were problematic. "Intel’s statements during yesterday’s Intel  Investor Meeting about Microsoft’s plans for the next version of Windows  were factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading," the company  said in a statement sent to 
The Register. "From the first  demonstrations of Windows on SoC, we have been clear about our goals and  have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage. As  such, we have no further details or information at this time."
Intel declined to elaborate on James' comments. "We are not commenting further on this one," a company spokeswoman told us. ®