For those of you still interested in Virtual PC 7, or running Vista on your PowerPC..

[greenlightracer]

I wrote an article on my website about running Virtual PC 7 under Leopard (under which it loses its ability to access optical drives):

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/29/vpc7_with_leopard_and_vista/

I also included some VPC benchmarks, a tutorial to running Vista on your PowerPC, and a (sad) Word 2007 vs. Word 2008 start up video comparison: 12.6 seconds for Word 2008 to start up natively, and only 9.6 seconds for Word 2007 under emulation.

I just thought I should post this in case anyone was still interested in using Virtual PC 7. Which is a very small population of Mac users I'm sure ;)

[mkrishnan]

You know... as much as I regret saying it, at that point, you might almost seriously consider something like... buying a very low cost PC (e.g. the Eee Box), setting it up and then running it headless on your network, and remote desktop-ing to it. That wouldn't be free -- it'll cost you about $300. But it'll be much, much faster, and a device like the Eee Box would be very physically small and low power, so it wouldn't really clutter up your space.

[dukebound85]

i remember HATING virtual PC. soooooo slow on my then emac 1ghz


it was unbearable

[greenlightracer]

You know... as much as I regret saying it, at that point, you might almost seriously consider something like... buying a very low cost PC (e.g. the Eee Box), setting it up and then running it headless on your network, and remote desktop-ing to it. That wouldn't be free -- it'll cost you about $300. But it'll be much, much faster, and a device like the Eee Box would be very physically small and low power, so it wouldn't really clutter up your space.

No I understand, this argument has been made many times. I don't need to use windows programs nearly enough to warrant the purchase of a new pc, you know what I mean? It's more there for connivence. Things like checking compatibility with (windows) Office 2007, or using a feature that's not available in the mac version, or doing something like trying out software thats not available for mac that I'm curious about(like the Google Chrome Beta)

[hogmog]

This post explains a lot. As well as breaking the optical drive I think Leopard has also broken the ability to use USB sticks with VPC as well. Have had to copy new applications/application updates to the 'shared' drive on powerbook HDD and then install software from there.

VPC will have to keep going for some time to come - with the substantial hike in Macbook prices over here have abandoned the idea of replacing my trusty PB.

[greenlightracer]

This post explains a lot. As well as breaking the optical drive I think Leopard has also broken the ability to use USB sticks with VPC as well. Have had to copy new applications/application updates to the 'shared' drive on powerbook HDD and then install software from there.

VPC will have to keep going for some time to come - with the substantial hike in Macbook prices over here have abandoned the idea of replacing my trusty PB.

Yes installing the boot camp drivers will fix this as well. Usb sticks/usb devices (cameras etc) will function fine after installing the boot camp drivers.