abaout virtual pc

basurita20

Registered
hi. i would like some info about virtual pc. the reason is that i'm planing to buy the now g4 ibook, i think the price is great. Also, i would like to know if virtual pc runs ANY windows application, or just few of them, and how fast does it runs them. If you have any extra info about virtual pc (like external diveces compatibility, networking, etc)please, post it!!
thanks a lot!!
 
sorry, i forgot to specify that i'm asking about the last version of virtual pc, i think it's 6. I've been reading about the previous version , number 5, and it says that was really slow on OS X, so, how about version 6 on OS X? thanks
 
VirtualPC 6 is great on the OS X 10.2 but I don't know how is it on Panther... Some people reported that you can Quit Finder in order to make it run even faster under OS X 10.2! :)

Anyways, although it may run, say 90% if not more, of Windows apps the same cannot be said about games! And even when it will run those apps do not expect something faster than say a P3/500MHz or so! In some cases you may be able to make it feel by tweaking options in Windows and/or VirtualPC like a P3/600-700MHz but that's it! Also, the more RAM you allocate to VirtualPC the faster it will feel... In some cases you may want to use an actual old Wintel/Amd box in order to run Windows stuff :eek:

The thing that is great about VPC to me is that I can load ANY Windows version at the same time and after doing what I need to do, I can select if I want to save the changes or not! Also, I can pause or even pause & save the changes in a given Windows version and next time I can resume exactly from where I was before! :D

A final question: Why do you need VPC? Is there a Windows app that you need on your Mac? The majority of Windows apps and games can be found for the Mac OS X 10.2 too, not to mention that you can find some better apps on the Mac! Name some apps that you need on your Mac and we will let you know if they exist or not or even some similar ones ;)
 
There are a bunch of threads on your question. If you want to have detailed information use search.
But I can answer you some of your questions. You can run any windows application. Basically you install a regular windows os on a dedicated drive that you set up with virtual pc. After that, your comp behaves like a x86 system with reduced performance. Virtual pc runs quite fast on my machine, but still it's too slow for heavy apps such as games. I am mostly using the M$ Office XP on virtual pc 6 and it's fast enough for my presenations.
You can't really replace a windows-box with virtual pc, but for those who really need to run some x86 apps and don't see the point of buying a pc, it's an interesting alternative...
 
Zammy-Sam said:
orbstah, really? Well, panther running here and vpc 6.1 as well ;)

hmm, well i aint gonna listen to connectix anymore :)

was it an upgrade to panther or a clean install ?
 
cwoody222, I know one way.
Start Terminal and type "top"
See the number to the left of Finder? It's called a PID number (Process ID, I believe).
Either open a new Terminal window, or type Shift+Tab.
Type "kill PID" (replace PID with the PID number of Finder"
 
orbstah, VPC doesn't belong to connectix anymore, but Microsoft. From the 6.1 update on, all details has been changed from connectix into microsoft.
I have a clean install of panther here. But VPC was updated from 5 to 6 and finally to 6.1
 
voice- said:
cwoody222, I know one way.
Start Terminal and type "top"
See the number to the left of Finder? It's called a PID number (Process ID, I believe).
Either open a new Terminal window, or type Shift+Tab.
Type "kill PID" (replace PID with the PID number of Finder"

I do that but Finder just immediately Restarts.
 
To quit the Finder, either a) kill the PID from top in Terminal, b) force-quit it, or c) use Tinkertool to enable the Quit command from the Finder menu (the safest method, I'm sure).

VPC 6 will not run on the G5, if you have one. It requires an update from Microsoft, which could never come, knowing Microsoft.
 
thanks hulkarous....basically, i need virtual pc because i'm in third year of computer engineering, and we're promgramming a lot with visual studio (wich i hate, but there's no other way) and also i use a lot swish, wich i didn't found it for mac...
thanks for all the info you gave me!!!
 
oh, i've just read that vpc doesn't run under Panther! is this true??? some ones says that it runs, others says that no...please, if somebody knows this for suree, let me knowwww
 
It runs just fine. Don't worry about it. I have panther here and vpc as well. It's just not running on G5 machines.
 
i'm running VPC 6 under Panther too. Runs fine ... but I've gotta get more RAM for my powerbook ... only 512 MB right now. makes my computer quite slow.

unfortunately, I'm using VPC b/c a lot of stock investing related stuff works only with Windows. (ie, Explorer plug in that works only under Win IE and not Mac IE; also, wizetrade).
 
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