Virtual PC

PDD

Hi Guys,

I was just wondering if anyone out there has used Virtual PC and if so what is it like. Im going to be switching over to a Mac and I will still need to run a few Windows apps but none of them are graphics intensive. Would Virtual PC be sufficient for these?

PDD

whippet

VPC is a little hit and miss. If you are buying a new mac you can get the intel mac with Boot camp and install a version of XP which would be far better than VPC.

Sad Professor

on a powerpc mac, virtual pc is next to useless. not worth the stress, i say. on an intel mac you can, as whippet suggests, dual boot or wait for a new version of VPC or another equivalent emulator to be released. i don't think there's anything at the moment tho.

DIRTY69

Im surprised to hear the emulators are not very good. i havent got around to using them myself yet.

still, the duel boot might take a fair bit of pressous space on my macbook!

I presume the 64 bit version of XP would be the way to go for the duel boot. I've heard Vista is supposed to be rubbish.

PDD

I would have thought some of the emulators would be quite good. From what Ive read up on the net Virtual PC is the best emulator out there but highly dependent on RAM and there are a one or two others.

Diarmuid

PDD wrote:

Hi Guys,

I was just wondering if anyone out there has used Virtual PC and if so what is it like. Im going to be switching over to a Mac and I will still need to run a few Windows apps but none of them are graphics intensive. Would Virtual PC be sufficient for these?

PDD

Hi

I am a big mac user and fan, however I would question the sense in switching if you are still dependent on programs that work only on PCs.

Maybe go the boot camp route but it sounds like a lot of hassle.

What programs can you not get an equivalent/port on Mac?

Diarmuid

PDD

A PIM called Treepad and one or two programs for driving instructions but there are other PC's in the house if I need to use them just the hastle of having to do that. They are very simple apps.

unnamed

I've been using Parallels desktop for a few weeks now, on my Mac Book Pro, and I'm very happy with it. Its really fast, and uses about 10GB of disk space. The hardware video/sound/network is still software emulated so I'm not sure if you could use it for games.

Diarmuid

unnamed wrote:

I've been using Parallels desktop for a few weeks now, on my Mac Book Pro, and I'm very happy with it. Its really fast, and uses about 10GB of disk space. The hardware video/sound/network is still software emulated so I'm not sure if you could use it for games.

Looking at reviews of Parallels , it seems quite cool and the price is good too. Of couse you have to add in the price of WinXP but it looks like an option

eoineen

Yes I too have been using Parallels desktop for the last week or so and have found it really good although I have yet to learn how to install the copy of ubuntu I have on CD.

I also have a legit copy of W98SE I would like ot use but cannot seem to boot from the CD, any tips for me? Do I have to create an ISO file?

PDD

Hi Guys, As I will be getting a 20" G5 iMac can anyone share their experiences of using any kind of virtualisation on these machines. PDD

Urban Weigl

Get Parallels: http://www.parallels.com/

It will let you run Windows XP on any Intel Mac (including the MacBook and MacBook Pro) at near-native speeds. It does this by leveraging the virtualisation technology built into Intel chips, so it doesn't need to emulate. While I don't really need Windows, I've installed it to kill some time, and can attest to the fact that it runs extremely well.

Diarmuid

PDD wrote:

Hi Guys, As I will be getting a 20" G5 iMac can anyone share their experiences of using any kind of virtualisation on these machines. PDD

I would imagine that virtualisation would be a lot more difficult (if even possible?) with a G5. To use Parallels you need an intel cpu.