Thanks for the comment. I think the difference between this and boot camp is that Boot Camp boots Windows XP itself and does not run within an operating system. However, I guess you have the same type of thing when you run VMware fusion on your mac, you still need to patch the machine.

However, what I can see from this is that it will always be running in the background. From the Within Windows link it says “XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.)” So this might be an out of sight, out of mind type of mentality. Will the virtual XP be annoying and yell patch me! patch me! like a regular installation?

Thanks Tim for the intriguing comment,
Ed

It is a very good point and is something I've been questioning about Mac Boot Camp for a while (this sounds like the equivalent to me).

At the Enterprise level I would just lean towards turning the functionality off. But I wonder if one decides to try and leverage it in an Enterprise environment what sort of havoc it would cause on existing patch management systems that track hosts by MAC, Domain Name, Agent (duplicate records for each OS?) etc…

Tim