Virtual PC 7 - Questions

smithy

smithy

designer.
Hi, well after being a mac user for about 2 months i realised that i need to get a pc for some things i need to do. Eg. Webdesign and other stuff. And instead of buying a cheap built computer for 600 bucks (just the tower AUD) i was thinking maybe i should just get VPC 7 for 300 bucks with Xp Home. But i have a few questions below.

1. Viruses - we all know that xp gets heaps of viruses will they affect the mac like in anyway ??
2. Perfomance - is it dead slow ? How fast would it run on my emac 1.25ghz 1gb ram G4 ?
3. Internet - Will the internet from the mac go straight to the windows xp emulator, like will it reconise it. For the internet my isp uses a heartbeat thingy and you have to have a login client that only allows 1 user per account but you can like use a router and stuff.
4. Is VPC 7 Worth it?? or should i just get a cheap tower?
5. Should i get a virus Scanner for it or shouldnt i bother? I will only be using it for like scanning things, word documents, editing html documents, and downloading stuff.
6. Does it basically work like a pc ? eg. windows update or is it seperate for vpc and usb devices do they work the same?

Thanks in advance i know its alot to ask if you could answer those questions for me, but i would really really really appreciate it! Thanks :)
 
1. Nope. They'll stay within VPC7 and just wreak havoc with your Windows installation.

2. Yep. You'll probably see better performance from Windows 2000 Pro than XP, but it'll still be slow.

3. Yes. You can either "share" the connection with VPC, or you can have VPC show up as a separate computer, in which case you'd need a router to hand out that extra IP address.

4. Cheap tower, if you plan on using Windows to any extent.

5. It depends on what you're gonna use VPC for. If you do a lot of Windows internet stuff, it may be worth your while. Of course, you can always load up the Windows installation fresh and clean the way you want it, then make a backup copy of it -- that way, if you ever get a virus or something goes screwy, just copy the backup copy back over.

6. Works just like a PC, Windows Update and all. USB devices can be used as long as you've got a Windows driver for them (Windows includes a lot of drivers out of the box, but there's a chance you may need to download a driver).
 
The viri will stay in Windows - unless you start using shared folders. The folders you share between Mac and VPC are vulnerable. Say you would share your whole user account with VPC: A virus on VirtualPC could erase your home folder, basically. Or just infect files there, which you might send to other people using PCs (and thus hurt them). An antivirus tool is important on Windows, whether you're using VPC or a real PC.

If you intend to _work_ on the PC (webdesign, just checking sites with IE on PC or really WORKING on the PC side?) I suggest a real PC tower. They _do_ come cheap enough, and even a slow PC is faster than VPC.
 
hahaha well that pc is like possessed. Like its just shut down and like wont even go into windows now, and like is slow as all hell and yer - i dont know whats ever gone wrong with it. The waranty finishes early next year so after that i think i might play around with it but i dunno how much it would cost to upgrade - yet again i dunno even if it is worth upgrading.
 
that's the beautiful thing about Windows. Seems to slow down after a few months of use, no matter what you do. I've tried defragging, optimizing the registry, cleaning unused items on the registry, nada.

Something I'm glad I left behind when I moved to OS X.
 
Well, that 800 MHz PC is still faster than what you'll accomplish with VPC. Just clean-install Windows XP on that machine, get an antivirus software etc.
 
Well i had xp on it, it ran prettyt good and it was just a ugrpade from 98 but after awhile it stuffed up. Like i couldnt find any driver updates for the sound card, and then i think the video stuffed up. And then i had to reformat it back to 98. But litterally that machine is possesed i could go on for days of how much trouble we've had with it. Like one time the actual thing started smoking and i think the harddrive got stuffed so the people gave us a new one, yet still same problems. Its a HP Pavillion 8632 - never buy a Hp in my opionion. Hence i think i would just prefer a new computer - like theres ones in the junk mail for 898 (AUD) with a 17"" monitor and seems to have a decent proccesor but 256 ram.
 
Well basically all of my friends own pc's and like the majority of the computing society own them yanno its just sometimes when im makin small sites i might make them to big or to small and with windows in osx you can never really dertermine the best size and stuff I dunno well thing is i just sorta prefer making websites on pc's, but prefer making graphics and stuff on mac. Anyways i hardly make any websites these days just small personal layouts - really i hate making websites it gets boring for me.
 
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