Hi!
My question is, is it possible to implement in an upcoming service pack for windows 7 (let's say SP2) to make multiple logins to the same machine? Let's say one has a family with children who regularly use only less demanding applications like internet browsers,
word processors, youtube, media players, or someone jumping over to play a dead old game. One would rightfully ask, why is there a need of 2-3-4 entry level solutions (nettops for instance)? Any mainstream computer could handle 4 instances of a browser, media
player, word processor, mail client, messenger app, etc. all at once. Is it not possible to be able to hook up multiple keyboards, mice and displays to a Windows machine and have multiple people log in without the need of thin clients? (I know it's not possible,
but is it possible to implement in a future SP (or Win8) ?)
It would be real nice if one could lock hooked up devices to a User on the OS, and one could just sit down to a monitor, turn it on and have a separate login screen waiting there while someone else is using the machine at the same time.
I have opened a similar thread before asking the same thing with virtualisation technologies. An infinately basic solution to this problem is achievable through virtualisation technologies (VMWare or VirtualBox) but the main issue is that the input and the
display lag way too much. Even the simplest OpenGL or DirectX (DirectDraw even) is incapably slow, due to all GPU driver calls have to pass through an intermediate driver of the virtual machine who does a translation to the host driver. The other problem is,
that GPU accel to flash and all sorts of driver related funcionalities to all devices are lost, due to the virtual drivers inside the guest OS. If the multiple login capability would be integrated into Windows, there would be no need of virtual intermediate
drivers, all users could access all devices through the regular drivers. (One weak spot remains, compared to virtual machines: restarting the OS ends all running sessions, but we could live with that.)
