Will Virtual PC slow my Mac down a lot?

[maqq]

As much as I love my brand new Powerbook, I have to install VPC to run some WinXP only programs as my situation requires. I'm really worried that it will slow down my Mac big time.

I have a 1.25GHz Powerbook G4 with 512Mb of RAM, which I'm planning to upgrade to 1G or even higher. And I will have to install the lastest VPC WinXP. My question is, with the stock spec, will VPC totally kill my Mac? What kinda performance can I expect with 1G+ of memory?

I won't be running too many applications on Windows, just 2 or 3 simple programs which won't require too much performance.

Please help! Thanks in advance!!

[Counterfit]

It'll be like running on a 500MHz G4. Or so, never used one of those. But it's still faster than a 400MHz G3.

[iMeowbot]

VPC has some nice options like being able to have it relinquish some (or even all) of the CPU when it's not in the foreground. Depending on what you need to run, that alone may make the speed penalty a non-issue for you.

[tjwett]

Originally posted by maqq
Will Virtual PC slow my Mac down a lot?

only when you're using it ;)

[cb911]

hey maqq, nice machine you've got there. :)

i've got the same, and i just put another 1GB RAM in it... to bring it upto a total of 1500MB RAM! :D

i just set VPC (with Win2K installed) to use 512MB RAM and it seems to be running as good as you could expect. that good 'ol pinball game runs pretty well. :p

mind you, it might run a bit better if it's off a fresh re-boot. right now i've got about 11 apps open... Safari, Mail, Illustrator, Quicktime, iTunes, Sys Preferences, Maya... just the usual.

the extra RAM really makes it just fly along... definitely worth the investment. :D