Virtual PC Software use

[GetGo]

How many newbie's are using Virtual PC on their Macs. Will I need to buy this software if I'm using Microsoft Excel and Word. I have Microsoft Office and I don't want to buy it again for the Mac. Does it work OK or are there problems? I have alot of software I could load if I bought this product. What are you ex-PC users doing?

Thanks

[bubbamac]

Windows on VPC is extremely s...l...o...w...

If you're considering spending the money on VPC just to run Office, spend a little more and get Office for Mac.

[Sun Baked]

If you still have the PC...

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient

[GetGo]

Interesting... thanks for the feed back guys...

[amin]

I am a recent switcher, and I found VPC to be too slow for use with Office apps. If you or anyone in your household works for an educational institution, you can get Office for a relatively low price ($150 for three installations).

[James Craner]

Virtual PC is slow but I would say that word is quite usable with Virtual PC unless you are editing a long document and are constantly scrolling up and down. That having been said I would not want to spend more than a hour a day in Virtual PC. You may want to wait as Microsoft are due to bring out virtual pc 7 and rumours are going about that it will be a lot quicker - www.macosrumors.com.

[CmdrLaForge]

Originally posted by James Craner
Virtual PC is slow but I would say that word is quite usable with Virtual PC unless you are editing a long document and are constantly scrolling up and down. That having been said I would not want to spend more than a hour a day in Virtual PC. You may want to wait as Microsoft are due to bring out virtual pc 7 and rumours are going about that it will be a lot quicker - www.macosrumors.com.

Hi,

whats your definition of slow ? And on what kind of Mac are you using it. E.g. if you are using VPC on a 1 GHz G4 Mac how fast is it in comparison to a PC. Is it like a 1/10 a 100MHz PC or 1/3 a 333MHz machine. Is it possible to run it on a G3 ?
Are there any comparison benchmarks to get a better hint of what slow means ?

Thanks and cheers

[James Craner]

Originally posted by CmdrLaForge
Hi,

whats your definition of slow ? And on what kind of Mac are you using it. E.g. if you are using VPC on a 1 GHz G4 Mac how fast is it in comparison to a PC. Is it like a 1/10 a 100MHz PC or 1/3 a 333MHz machine. Is it possible to run it on a G3 ?
Are there any comparison benchmarks to get a better hint of what slow means ?

Thanks and cheers
I am running Virtual PC 6 on a Duel 1 Gig PowerMac MDD running Panther. I downloaded a Benchmark program called Fresh Diagnose in a Windows XP Virtual PC with 512MB of Ram allocated. I ran the benchmark suite. The processor benchmark came out quite well as slightly higher than a 700 MHz Celeron. The Hard Disk benchmark was also quite good and was rated higher than a 5400 RPM Quantum hard disk. However the Multimedia benchmark was very poor and gave a result of 248, this compared with 888 for the 700 MHz Celeron. Also the Display Benchmark came out poor as well and was equivalent to a SIS630 which from memory is a very basic graphics adapter chip built into some cheap and old motherboards on the PC.

Hope that clears up my definition of Slow. The Achilles heal is the poor graphics support in Virtual PC, this is the part that rumours are suggesting have been addressed in the upcoming release of Virtual PC and well as being able to Run on a G5, which it cannot at the moment.

[CMillerERAU]

Its really the graphics that kills VPC, anything that would normally be allocated to a graphics card has to be emulated through the CPU and that really bites. Having dual processors helps a little, so does Quark Extreme, but here's hoping Microsoft did some good work in this area when they release Virtual PC 7 someday. *crosses fingers for MWSF*