Virtual PC 7 Now Shipping

[MacRumors]

According to the Microsoft website, the Virtual PC 7 Mac Edition with Windows XP Professional (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=highlights) is now available for $249. Other flavors of Virtual PC 7 (XP Home, Windows 2000, and OS-less versions) are only available for pre-order at this time. This new version includes many new features to the Mac platform, but most notable is support for the Power Mac G5 and presumably the new iMac G5 as well.

While Microsoft acquired Virtual PC (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030219155858.shtml) from Connectix primarily for its Windows versions of VPC, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has promised ongoing active development of the Mac version. Due to changes in the G5 architecture, prior versions of Virtual PC have remained incompatible with the PowerMac G5s. Version 7 was expected initially in January of 2004 (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/01/20040107151459.shtml) at MWSF. After a no-show, VPC 7 was expected in 'the first half of 2004' from Microsoft, but was again delayed (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/05/20040512171958.shtml) in May due to rigorous testing concerns.

[taco]

can't wait to try this on my rev. b g5 dual 1.8!

[Nermal]

I hope it has native video support :)

[ojames]

This was alredy reported (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=626) on AppleInsider yesetday?

[swissmann]

I hope it is fast. Version 6 just isn't usable except for really lame and tiny apps.

[dizastor]

Now that Microsoft owns VPC, you can pollute your Mac with two MS products for the price of one! Where do I sign up?


Yeah yeah, "cross platform testing on one machine" bah.

[dizastor]

This was alredy reported (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=626) on AppleInsider yesetday?

So was it? Why are you asking us? This is Macrumors.

[mvc]

And the only real issue is - how fast is it?

[BornAgainMac]

Someone here should buy it and install Doom III on it and give us a review on the performance. :)

[huevohead]

I'm not the most proficient Mac user other than with FCP, so will this or will this not be fast enough to run my PC based games that have gathering dust while awaiting my 2.5 g5. Im talking mostly FFXI.

[kwajo.com]

Someone here should buy it and install Doom III on it and give us a review on the performance. :)

"report application failure to apple?"

:P

[vniow]

Boo! XP Pro included only! Boooo!!!

http://www.dfexchange.ca/images/emoticons/finger.gif

[Trekkie]

Sweet. Something to run MS Money on my shiny new iMac G5. Don't waste your money on the Pro version, get the Home one. no reason to buy pro on an emulated mac unless it lets you emulate a two processor machine

[Flying Llama]

I bought Virtual pc 6 and it is not useable. soooo slowwww!

[T-O-M]

... because I will really need it. I will use it on my dual 2.5 Ghz G5 if it'll ever arrive here in Germany. I 'm a so called It-Specialist and so I really need a Windoze... So I hope that I can throw my ugly gray PeeCee away.. or sell it on eBay, and replace it with or by ( my english is so bad ) this great Program. It's just such a pity that most users still need windows and PC's.
My Christmas wish ( and yes I know it's prety far away ) is, that the Mac will make it to all kinds of companys and will take over the world !!! yeah !! ;)

[HenMaster6000]

The only thing I use Virtual PC for anymore (besides OCCASIONAL web testing) is fixing my family's Windows XP machines using the Remote Assistance thing. I wish the Remote Desktop for Mac could do that.... but alas, they mostly have XP Home and it doesn't allow those connections.

Lee Tom
have you ever heard of vnc? it's free

[ioinc]

It's about time.

for some things you absolutely need it.

I am a full time student taking all internet classes.

When I complained to some of the school staff that you could not access all the features from a mac (using Safari or IE) they told me they were thinking about telling students that they did not support mac and recommended against buying a mac.

sigh.... It is the way of things (at least some things)

[12ibookg4]

everybody wants to know how fast it runs, well here is what ms says. (screen shot from virtual tour)

[sparky76]

Have you checked out the Microsoft Web page? A huge area of unused white space at the bottom. Is it a tribute to the new iMac?
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=highlights

[dogcowx]

Please tell me its so! :)

[Billy_ca]

Why did it take a full year to get G5 support? That's really lame.

[broken_keyboard]

Yay for Microsoft!
I hope it runs at a good speed.

I will buy the OS free version when it is ready. I have an old copy of Win 2000 which is not installed on anything.

[jjmaximum]

Don't care about VPC at all, but have to ask why someone would pay $249 for it when you can buy a PC for about that price anyway.

[Some_Big_Spoon]

They insist on trying to put lipstick on that pig. Wonder what kaos will ensue when w2k goes eol.

Boo! XP Pro included only! Boooo!!!

http://www.dfexchange.ca/images/emoticons/finger.gif

[dizastor]

They insist on trying to put lipstick on that pig. Wonder what kaos will ensue when w2k goes eol.

That pig needs more than lipstick. Call up ABC and schedule an "Extreme Makeover". The show ends with the WinXp box in the trash and a new iMac sitting on the table in all of it's glory. Sorry to spoil it for ya. :P

[SiliconAddict]

Benchmarks. I want benchmarks :)

[MacsRgr8]

Yay for Microsoft!
.

:confused:
That's a first.

I bet Connectix would have finished it faster (arguably better too)...
I would "test" it first before buying... I can't say M$ is advertizing VPC's speed. No mentioning of hardware grfx support as was rumored.
It'll run OK on a Dual G5, sure. But probably mainly 'cause of the speed of the G5, and being able to use more memory.

We'll see.

[Some_Big_Spoon]

Looking for a good laugh?

Benchmarks. I want benchmarks :)

[SiliconAddict]

Don't care about VPC at all, but have to ask why someone would pay $249 for it when you can buy a PC for about that price anyway.


Oh I don't know. Maybe some of us don't want to carry two laptops with us. http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif

[birdherder]

I will probably get the upgrade version once it becomes available and I have an extra $100 lying around [doubtful any time soon]. But if I get a G5 I guess I'll have to.

Maybe it is just me, but after installing SP2 on the version of XP Pro running in VPC6, the windows apps seem to really be running faster [nothing too processor intensive but at least things like IE doesn't take forever to fire up and open to the google homepage].

[MacsRgr8]

sidenote:

It'll be interesting to see if someone could compare VPC 6 and 7 with the same guest OS, runing on the same (Dual) G4?

If I get hold of a copy (something about a sour cable?), I'll happily test it on a Dual 1.25 GHz G4 (FW 800) 1.5 GB RAM.

[2GMario]

Virtual PC is a must for us web developers

i had used vpc 6 on a ibook 800mhz 12 inch with 640mb ram and it ran slow, to slow to bare

as said above, hopefully the g5's dual processors can kick things up a bit

but in regards to why you would use vpc... me and my partner dev our website together, usually sitting next to each other

thats 2 laptops and a g5 so far. now put a pc with windows 2000, a pc with windows xp, both for testing in different variants of IE and ul see the use for vpc 7 on our g5

our table is a good 14 feet long and every square foot of it is taken up with something, layouts, pcs, etc...

not saying i like windows, if we could, we would dev for FireFox, Safari and othe mozilla's and ignore IE, but corporate america (our target audience) begs to differ.

-Mario

[ZildjianKX]

Man, it's about freaking time... I've had my G5 a whole year and no virtual PC... that's pretty rough for a switcher.

Good time to come out with it now that the iMac G5 is out...

[SeanMcg]

This was alredy reported on AppleInsider yesetday?

It was rumored to have been RTM'd or set for announcement. This was official confirmation.

Why did it take a full year to get G5 support? That's really lame.

It didn't take a full year to get G5 support, although that was a major engineering issue. The CPU geeks can explain it better (no offense intended), but the instruction set of the G5 did not support a mode ("little-endian", whatever that is) that VPC had depended on to do emulation. They got that figured out, but I have to wonder a)how much extra overhead was needed to account for that, b) if the code adjusts for the type of processor in the machine, and c) if G4s are going to be left behind by this update.

Then the release was then pushed back even further each time XP SP2 was delayed. I expected that this announcement would come close on the heels of the release of SP2 via Windows Update. They have probably had the boxes ready to go for some time now. I guess they wanted to ship the most expensive package first.

I only need the upgrade package, which will be shipping later, because I already have the licenses and disk images I need to do my work. They could have made the upgrade available a long time ago.

For anyone considering this, pack your machine with as much memory as you can afford. And definitely, don't expect to do gaming.

[NusuniAdmin]

I wunder if u can still run linux on it :p

[MacsRgr8]

I wunder if u can still run linux on it :p

I'll be using it to run PearPC on it :D

[Some_Big_Spoon]

Wonder if that goes over most people's heads here.

According to Here (http://vpc.visualwin.com/) it does and it doesn't.

I wunder if u can still run linux on it :p

[Some_Big_Spoon]

Wish Apple would finally get the gumption to build something like Pear PC (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/) into the OS, but until then, this little guy has a ways to go.

I'll be using it to run PearPC on it :D

[JohnGalt]

Mr. Softie VPC demo page says it's 10-30% faster than prior versions. And graphics are faster/better.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=vpcdemo

Go see the flashy demo: It rivals anything pixar had done, or ever will do.....NOT

[Nermal]

Supports more than 512MB now?

Please tell me its so! :)

No, it still only supports 512 MB. Some changes I've noticed are better printing support, it's faster :), and you can import your images from VPC 6. I haven't had much time to fiddle around with it yet, so I can't get into any more detail at the moment.

[Nermal]

I wunder if u can still run linux on it :p

Yep :)

[shamino]

Boo! XP Pro included only! Boooo!!!

http://www.dfexchange.ca/images/emoticons/finger.gif
That's all they're shipping now. According to the MS "how to buy" page (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=howtobuy), there will be several retail packages:

With WinXP Pro for $250
With WinXP Home for $220
With Win2K Pro for $250
Without any Windows (bring your own OS license) for $130
Upgrade from VPC 5 or later for $100


Right now, only the XP Pro edition is shipping, but they're taking pre-orders for the rest. So if you want to run something else, just wait a little longer.

[IBSNOWEDIN]

anyone think it could run PC games on a G5 imac?

[rikers_mailbox]

Have you checked out the Microsoft Web page? A huge area of unused white space at the bottom. Is it a tribute to the new iMac?
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=highlights

Ok, you got at least one laugh out of this. :D

Although I'm a stickies person (the tangible kind) and I'll cover that whitespace in no time with useless clutter!

[GetSome681]

No, it still only supports 512 MB. Some changes I've noticed are better printing support, it's faster :), and you can import your images from VPC 6. I haven't had much time to fiddle around with it yet, so I can't get into any more detail at the moment.

Do you think it's fast enough to play an old (say '95) 2d game?

[Flying Llama]

anyone think it could run PC games on a G5 imac?

Hmm i doubt it... :(

[The Red Wolf]

The only thing I use Virtual PC for anymore (besides OCCASIONAL web testing) is fixing my family's Windows XP machines using the Remote Assistance thing. I wish the Remote Desktop for Mac could do that.... but alas, they mostly have XP Home and it doesn't allow those connections.

Lee Tom

ARD 2.0 allows you to monitor and take control of windows machines.

[Nermal]

Do you think it's fast enough to play an old (say '95) 2d game?

Version 6 was fast enough to play 2D games so I'd expect 7 to be able to handle them too :)

The newest game I could run on 6 was Final Fantasy VII, which I think is from 1998. I'll need to try it again under VPC 7 once I get a chance.

[porky]

Ok, just one question, will it run Autocad 2000? Who can answer this?
If not, Steve, please buy Autodesk! :D

[EminenceGrise]

Why did it take a full year to get G5 support? That's really lame.

Because the G5 does not support the 'pseudo-little-endian' mode that the G3 and G4 chips did. PPC chips are 'big-endian', while x86 chips are 'little-endian'. Endian'ness' refers to which way the binary numbers are formatted with respect to the inner workings of the CPU (whether the first bit in a number is the 'most significant' bit or 'least significant' bit). It would be analagous to the difference between writing the number one-thousand left to right as "1000" or right to left as "0001".

The pseudo little endian mode of the G3 and G4 allowed you to tell the CPU "this is a little endian number" and the CPU would do whatever conversions necessary to work with it, making it a bit easier to work with binary x86 code - the PPC CPU could do some of the emulation work that would otherwise have to be done in software. The G5 doesn't have this mode, so MS had to go through all of the VPC code and remove any dependencies on it (for the G5 at least), come up with a software method of implementing the same function, and then test it to make sure it worked. Not an entirely trivial task.

Being Microsoft, I'm surprised it didn't take them longer....

[Beck446]

Can you all help me out a bit?

I need to have XP Pro for law school exams. Can I install that onto my Mac via virtual PC? How is virtual PC able to store Apps on a Mac anyway? Do they not appear in the 'applications' folder, but somewhere buried inside the VPC app itself?

I'm hoping I can use this to take my exams and not have to borrow/buy a XP Pro machine. Help!

[ImAlwaysRight]

Why did it take a full year to get G5 support? That's really lame.
It's been more than a year. The G5 has been shipping for over a year. Surely Microsoft had a prototype G5 even before the June 2003 G5 announcement, so its been probably 15-16 months at least they've had to work on this.

[shamino]

Do you think it's fast enough to play an old (say '95) 2d game?
I'm also interested in knowing if it will play DOS games.

I've got a few (like Acclaim's Bust-A-Move 2) that don't run on Windows XP for some reason (keeps asking for the CD even though it's in the drive) and some others (like EA's Magic Carpet) that I can't seem to configure properly for sound (it's either silent or it crashes.)

They work fine in a real DOS environment (or even the one underneath Win98), so hopefully they'll work on a VPC system.

[neoelectronaut]

I'd love to play Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Rayman 2: The Great Escape, Simcity 3000, and possibly Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver....among a few from the same era I'm forgetting.

[shamino]

Great points! Do you like the new imac?
I like it quite a bit. But I won't get one because I'm a huge fan of dual-processor systems and the iMac only has one processor.

I'll get a G5 (or maybe G6, depending on how long I wait) tower of some kind when my existing G4 tower (dual 1GHz) starts to get too old - but I don't see that happening for several more years.

Of course, this will change when dual-core PPC 970s come out. They would make a dual-processor iMac possible. But when those chips ship, Apple will probably start shipping towers with two dual-core processors and then I'll want a 4-way system :D

[bar italia]

Now that Microsoft owns VPC, you can pollute your Mac with two MS products for the price of one! Where do I sign up?


Yeah yeah, "cross platform testing on one machine" bah.
Yeah, you don't have any need for VPC...why should anyone else? :rolleyes:

[bar italia]

I bought Virtual pc 6 and it is not useable. soooo slowwww!
Hence the update.

[bar italia]

anyone think it could run PC games on a G5 imac?
A friggin iMac will barely run "Mac" games. Good luck!

[jaromski]

Ok, just one question, will it run Autocad 2000? Who can answer this?
If not, Steve, please buy Autodesk! :D


YES THIS QUESTION IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE. hence the CAPITALIZATION. a native port would be better, but hey if i can see this thing running...decently...on a dual g5 I CAN FINALLY SWITCH EVERYTHING TO MAC.

thank you god

jaromski

[shamino]

Because the G5 does not support the 'pseudo-little-endian' mode that the G3 and G4 chips did. PPC chips are 'big-endian', while x86 chips are 'little-endian'.
Almost.

The PPC architecture allows for chips to be built to either "endian". Until the G5, all chips in the series could go either way, and could be switched on the fly. This is what VPC did.

IBM removed the little-endian capabilities from the PPC 970. They probably thought nobody would care, since the little-endian PPC operating systems (like Windows NT/PPC and OS/2 PPC) never really went anywhere and are little more than historic footnotes today. As far as I know, VPC is the only software product that ever used it.
Endian'ness' refers to which way the binary numbers are formatted with respect to the inner workings of the CPU (whether the first bit in a number is the 'most significant' bit or 'least significant' bit). It would be analagous to the difference between writing the number one-thousand left to right as "1000" or right to left as "0001".
Technically correct, but the order of bits within a byte, while significant for someone designing a processor or designing support chips to interface to a processor, is almost never of importance to software.

Most of the time, the term refers to the order of bytes that comprise multi-byte numbers (most commonly 16-, 32- and 64-bit integers, and 4- and 8-byte floats.)

For instance, the 64-bit hexadecimal number 0x123456789ABCDEF0 stored at address zero on a big-endian machine would have the following values in memory:
0:0x12 1:0x34 2:0x56 3:0x78
4:0x9A 5:0xBC 6:0xDE 7:0xF0

On a little-endian machine, the same number at the same location would have the following values in memory:
0:0xF0 1:0xDE 2:0xBC 3:0x9A
4:0x78 5:0x56 6:0x34 7:0x12

There are other byte orderings than these two, but you aren't likely to find them used in modern processors.

There are technical advantages and disadvantages to both representations and arguing which is "better" usually results in a religious flame-war. The big deal is that it's far easier to emulate a chip when your own processor supports the same byte ordering. When IBM removed little-endian capability from the PowerPC, it forced Connectix (and later Microsoft) to make a very substantial change to VPC in order to remain compatible.
The pseudo little endian mode of the G3 and G4 allowed you to tell the CPU "this is a little endian number" and the CPU would do whatever conversions necessary to work with it,
I know that these mixed-mode instructions exist, but I thought VPC actually switches the CPU in and out of little-endian mode to do the x86 emulation.
making it a bit easier to work with binary x86 code - the PPC CPU could do some of the emulation work that would otherwise have to be done in software. The G5 doesn't have this mode, so MS had to go through all of the VPC code and remove any dependencies on it (for the G5 at least), come up with a software method of implementing the same function, and then test it to make sure it worked. Not an entirely trivial task.
About this, we're in complete agreement.

[Elan0204]

I'll reserve judgement until I see benchmarks and hear user reports, but I really hope this is a big improvement over version 6. You would think that Microsoft would be the best ones to know how to get Windows running at its fastest, even if on emulated hardware.

[kirk26]

This was alredy reported (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=626) on AppleInsider yesetday?


"Yesterday". And it's posted here today as well.

[jaromski]

You would think that Microsoft would be the best ones to know how to get Windows running at its fastest, even if on emulated hardware.

I hate to be pessimistic....BUT....look how fast MS products run on "native" hardware. Doesn't leave much hope for "virtual" hardware now does it?

JaromSki

P.S. Autodesk if you can hear me port Autocad NOW!!! Help us cast off these shackles of virtual hardware!!! Besides any self-respecting architecture firm and/or design professional _requires_ mac. Simple math really.

[SeaFox]

It's about time.

for some things you absolutely need it.

I am a full time student taking all internet classes.

When I complained to some of the school staff that you could not access all the features from a mac (using Safari or IE) they told me they were thinking about telling students that they did not support mac and recommended against buying a mac.

Maybe you should remind them that the internet is supposed to be accessable to everyone equally and not a platform specific medium. :rolleyes:

[zwida]

Good to see Office "Pro" is shipping on the same loose schedule as everything else these days...

Apple store shows a "September" shipping date.

And, of course, I actually NEED this to play nice in the 200 client Windows (and me and my Mac) office. They're killing the Citrix box this month and they just don't have too many ways to hook me into their oh-so-current Win 2000 environment...

[BWhaler]

everybody wants to know how fast it runs, well here is what ms says. (screen shot from virtual tour)

All I care about is speed for Office type apps. 10-30% better than dog-ass-slow v.6 doesn't inspire much confidence. I don't want to play Windows games--I've got a PS2--but the occasional Access db or utility needs to be at a usable speed. Just make it usable, that's all I hope for.

I really want this to be a great product. I've got a 2.5ghz G5 with 2gigs of memory, so I think I've done my part. But I hope MS really put their heart into this product and didn't pull any of their dirty tricks by crippling it in some fashion.

If it is of the quality of Office for the Mac 2004, I will be very happy and gladly pay for it.

[morkintosh]

Someone here should buy it and install Doom III on it and give us a review on the performance. :)

and if it were playable I'd rethink every nasty thought I've ever had about Microsoft

[morkintosh]

All I care about is speed for Office type apps. 10-30% better than dog-ass-slow v.6 doesn't inspire much confidence. I don't want to play Windows games--I've got a PS2--but the occasional Access db or utility needs to be at a usable speed. Just make it usable, that's all I hope for.

MS Project!!!

[macidiot]

Is this thing only for G5 machines? Will it run on G4? I looked on the site and couldn't find hardware requirements anywhere...

I need visio and project... Thanks MS for not porting those :mad:

[Nermal]

Yes, it runs on G4s.

[Cooknn]

I know a real estate agent that bought an iPod and now is planning to get a new iMac - problem is that one of the programs she has to use to access listing data is Windows only. It grabs data via the net. Will VPC7 work for her?

[RIP]

MS says that upgrade cards and accelerators are not supported. Being that I just purchased an upgrade for my machine bringing it from a single 466 7400 to a dual 1.33 7457, I'm a bit concerned.

I wonder if it simply will not work or if I simply cannot be supported for any issues that may crop up if I use it on a machine with an upgraded CPU.

Can anyone who may have a beta of this have anything to add?

[Mudbug]

I know a real estate agent that bought an iPod and now is planning to get a new iMac - problem is that one of the programs she has to use to access listing data is Windows only. It grabs data via the net. Will VPC7 work for her?

It should, barring some unforseen reason, of course. This is actually the perfect way to make a case for a mac - show that with emulators like this, there is virtually no windows programs that won't work.

And RIP - statements like that are common as far as not 'supporting' upgrade cards. It just means that the company isn't liable for any damage that may happen that could have happened anyway if a bug landed on the processor, cooked there, and burst into flames ;) You should probably not worry about it 'not being supported' - I'd be willing to bet it will work just fine.

[groinsniper]

The screenshot on the site shows the driver as being an S3 Trio 32/64 driver. I'm sure Doom 3 will fly on that...

javascript:openWin('/mac/screenshot.aspx?img=/mac/products/virtualpc/images/ftrsfull_vpc_02.gif','Screenshot','noresize,width=800,height=600')



1 Shot, 1 Groin

[gekko513]

I know a real estate agent that bought an iPod and now is planning to get a new iMac - problem is that one of the programs she has to use to access listing data is Windows only. It grabs data via the net. Will VPC7 work for her?
Yes it will.

[psxndc]

Can you all help me out a bit?

I need to have XP Pro for law school exams. Can I install that onto my Mac via virtual PC? How is virtual PC able to store Apps on a Mac anyway? Do they not appear in the 'applications' folder, but somewhere buried inside the VPC app itself?

I'm hoping I can use this to take my exams and not have to borrow/buy a XP Pro machine. Help!

Beck, I can almost 100% guarantee they will not allow this. I am in law school and if there is one thing law schools despise above all others, it is cheating. Which is one thing this would allow you to do. The program we use at school to take exams (on Windows) reboots your system, locks you out of all other programs, and dumps you into a very very basic text editor. Attempts to circumvent this cause an error in the program/mark it on the exam disk. Not what you want to be dealing with during your 3 hour contracts final.

Now imagine you have a window that is locked down (your emulated XP), but you have access to all your class notes and the internet via the mac the emulated XP is running on. Trust me, this will not fly. Even if your exams are open book (none of mine were), running two OSes will be seen as weird/suspicious.

Just borrow/rent a laptop. It will be less of a hassle.

-p-

[Phobophobia]

A friggin iMac will barely run "Mac" games. Good luck!

Lol. I almost did a spit-take here. Very nice. (Although the G5 should help this. :) )

[cmoney]

Beck, I can almost 100% guarantee they will not allow this. I am in law school and if there is one thing law schools despise above all others, it is cheating.

What about Virtual PC for Windows? Or VMWare? Can their software handle those?

[Nermal]

Version 6 was fast enough to play 2D games so I'd expect 7 to be able to handle them too :)

The newest game I could run on 6 was Final Fantasy VII, which I think is from 1998. I'll need to try it again under VPC 7 once I get a chance.

A performance review might be a while away - it crashed while trying to install the Virtual Machine Additions (formerly Virtual PC Additions).

[jwhitnah]

Boo! XP Pro included only! Boooo!!!

http://www.dfexchange.ca/images/emoticons/finger.gif
Yeah, I think XP pro on VP6 was much slower than XP home on VP6. Swallow hard.

[swissmann]

If it is 10% to 30% faster than v.6 on the same hardware maybe it will be usable on a G5. I have v.6 running on a dual 1 GHz. Painfully slow but still usable (painfully slow because I am used to the Dual 2 G5. Here's to hoping that improved speeds combined with a G5 turn out well.

[Abstract]

For all of you hoping to play semi-recent games, or even Doom III, using VPC 7......I don't want ANYTHING that you're smoking, you wacky dreamers, you.

And for anyone ripping MS because it took them a year...... Connectix couldn't have done better themselves. The MacBU is different than the regular MS you're thinking of. They actually don't do a horrid job. Its not like they go onto their computers at work and think of ways to screw you. Many of them are probably Mac users themselves.

[GFLPraxis]

It says on the Microsoft site that you require a "supported operating system" and that the supported OSes are 2000, XP Home, and XP Pro.
Does that mean we can't use 98? Or if we do, we can't use any of the special features?

[starflyer]

The Matrix Online is the only reason I can see myself using this for.

[amin]

10-30% faster will still be frustratingly slow. Forget about games.

[akushlan]

ill be picking this up tomorrow, and first thing im gong to do is install doom, and see how well that runs! LOL

my system:
Duak 2GHz G5
8GB RAM
2x250GB HD
Superdrive
Radeon 9800Pro 128mb
BT, AE
etc. etc.

[SiliconAddict]

Looking for a good laugh?

No I'm looking for an idea of what speed VPC7 benches out to be.
Aprox a 200Mhz system? 300Mhz system? 400Mhz system?

Frankly I don't care about games. As long as my existing apps that I've spent a ton of cash on over the years transitions over to VPC and still is relatively responsive, when I need to occasionally use them, I'm happy.

[Nermal]

I haven't tried any benchmarks, but XP's System Properties reports my G4 1.25 SP at 667 MHz, up from 400.

[SiliconAddict]

Yeah, I think XP pro on VP6 was much slower than XP home on VP6. Swallow hard.

Disable 90% of the services XP runs in the background (Does a desktop really need wireless zero config enabled by default?!?!?) and speed should be as good as Home. Home is a really bad version of XP to use. If you can stay away from it DO SO. The default security is worse then what is in XP Pro which is scary as heck. The services I can remember that you don't need to run XP:

-Fast User switching
-Messenger (ALWAYS DISABLE THIS!)
-Portable Media Serial Number
-Remote Registry (ALWAYS DISABLE THIS!)
-Secondary Login
-SSDS Discovery Service
-Terminal Services
-Upload Manager
-Server (If this is just going to be a standalone version of Windows no need for the service.)
-System Restore Service (VPC takes care of this.)
-Computer Browser
-Webclient
-Network Location Awareness (MS's network integration to VPC may depend on this so its a tossup if you need to disable it.)
-Theme (Since most Mac users aren't impressed with XP's Fisher Price theme anyways disabling the theme engine can free up some RAM and some speed.) You'll just be forced to use an Windows 2000-ish theme.

There are prob others. Those are the ones off the top of my head you prob don't need and can disable without any major issue and will prob speed up Windows. There are other tweaks you can do but that could turn into a 5 page post. Like I said before: You can tame windows to act like a decent OS but does the average user really want to spend time dicking with their OS or using their OS. :cool:

[madrobby]

anyone think it could run PC games on a G5 imac?
I had the Windows Age of Empires installed in Virtual PC 5 point something and it worked and was playable (on scrolling the frame rate dropped, but was ok enough). This was on a 1GHz Powerbook (TiBook) G4. On the G5 it might even allow to play older 3d Titles.

Someone should really try Half-life (I don't know if Half-life includes a software renderer - Hardware 3D is presumably still not available on the Virtual PC, should be doable though but I guess won't see the light of day until the time Longhorn comes about, due to the so-called "Avalon", a clone of Ma..., I mean the shiny new Interface...)

[ssamani]

The CPU geeks can explain it better (no offense intended), but the instruction set of the G5 did not support a mode ("little-endian", whatever that is) that VPC had depended on to do emulation.

Before there was ...
XBox vs PS2
MHz vs "Real-World Performance"
Netscape vs IE
RISC vs CISC
Mac vs PC
Unix vs Vax
Betamax vs VHS

...there was big endian vs little endian (redux)

And before that was big endian vs little endian that caused the Lilliputian War.

Sanj

[CmdrLaForge]

I am confident that a new ipod will be coming out in january because if you look at the buyers guide and the bars, it is exactly the amount of time needed to put new ones out. Most likely they will just make the 20 gb->30 gb, 40 stays middle, 60 gb called ProPod, new ipod mini's with 8 gb and new bluetooth capability. The 60 gb will be the top dawg sporting bluetooth standard, included blutooth headphones. The 30 and 40 gb will have bluetooth standard but wont include the new iPhones, which already exist, but will be partnered with apple to produce new higher quality headphones, with built in (slide able) mic for answering bluetooth phone call's. The advertisement will feature a girl walking down an escalator in an airport and listening to alicia keys, and then recieving a phone call. Slow Mo... Click, the mic pops out and back to regular mo... "Hello". It's not going to sport a wifi card, but the bluetooth powerpod can download singles off the bluetooth motorola cell phone. Apple and Motorola will be partnering in the commercial. There is 2 versions of the commercial. One in a new BMW, to be released at autoshow in Detroit. A guy is driving the bmw and downloads a song off the motorola phone that is transmitted by bluetooth to the bmw's new ipod integrated gps/ music selecting touch screen. Well thats i'll i can tell you guys for now. But it's safe to say that, after this new ipod/iTMS campaign, real wont stand a chance at getting itunes customers.

Believe it or not... Either way you'll see. ;)


Are you a little bit off topic ????

[iNetwork]

In one of the other topics, I called it!! I should get a tar just for that lol :rolleyes:

[displaced]

Maybe I've just got low standards, but...

I use VPC 6 on a 500MHz G3 iMac. It's pretty slow. But I'd say it was incredibly usable considering the specs of my machine and the fact that it's emulating an entire hardware platform in software.

Perhaps it's because I'm using Windows 98-SE on it rather than 2K/XP. The funny thing is, I remember using PC's that ran Win98 almost as slow as my Mac does (back in the day...).

I don't do much serious work in VPC any more. In fact, I hardly use it at all these days.

The thought of loading XP onto VPC makes my toes curl (and not in a good way). You've got to be a special kind of masochist to do that. Heck, you've got to be some sort of masochist even to install XP on a less-than very modern PC.

My #1 tip for VPC: Use the absolute minimum version of Windows you need, and avoid XP at any cost. Really.

And as far as I can tell, switching to the 'Classic' theme in XP makes not one jot of a difference. Pre-XP, all user-interface drawing was handled as primitive objects by the GDI system. So, for a command-button, the system simply drew a couple of different coloured rectangles and applied some colouration for effect. These primitives are insanely hardware accelerated, and have been for over a decade. XP took GDI and extended it to make GDI+. Now, instead of drawing using primitives, XP renders the entire GUI as sets of bitmapped images. When you switch to the 'Classic' theme, you're still drawing bitmaps all over the place but they're bitmaps which look like the old interface rather than that Luna abomination. Drawing bitmaps is processor-expensive compared to drawing primitives. And much much more so in an emulated environment. Remember too that XP's eyecandy isn't hardware accelerated beyond any generic 2D acceleration the card and driver provide.

[kettle]

Now that Microsoft owns VPC, you can pollute your Mac with two MS products for the price of one! Where do I sign up?

he he, that's the badger! :D

[kettle]

It's just such a pity that most users still need windows and PC's.

It's just such a pity that MOST users THINK they still need windows and PC's.

yes there are a few things that a minority still want to do, but it's still a majority that don't play high end games.

and if only PC users could see the light, Windows would be better too 'cos Microsoft would have to pull their finger out and start working the market instead of stagnantly manopolising it.

[kettle]

I am confident that a new ipod will be coming out in january because if you look at the buyers guide and the bars, it is exactly the amount of time needed to put new ones out. Most likely they will just make the 20 gb->30 gb, 40 stays middle, 60 gb called ProPod, new ipod mini's with 8 gb and new bluetooth capability. The 60 gb will be the top dawg sporting bluetooth standard, included blutooth headphones. The 30 and 40 gb will have bluetooth standard but wont include the new iPhones, which already exist, but will be partnered with apple to produce new higher quality headphones, with built in (slide able) mic for answering bluetooth phone call's. The advertisement will feature a girl walking down an escalator in an airport and listening to alicia keys, and then recieving a phone call. Slow Mo... Click, the mic pops out and back to regular mo... "Hello". It's not going to sport a wifi card, but the bluetooth powerpod can download singles off the bluetooth motorola cell phone. Apple and Motorola will be partnering in the commercial. There is 2 versions of the commercial. One in a new BMW, to be released at autoshow in Detroit. A guy is driving the bmw and downloads a song off the motorola phone that is transmitted by bluetooth to the bmw's new ipod integrated gps/ music selecting touch screen. Well thats i'll i can tell you guys for now. But it's safe to say that, after this new ipod/iTMS campaign, real wont stand a chance at getting itunes customers.

Believe it or not... Either way you'll see. ;)

This is what Macrumors is all about, maybe it should be in its own thread.

10/10 for effort. :)

[tny]

It says on the Microsoft site that you require a "supported operating system" and that the supported OSes are 2000, XP Home, and XP Pro.
Does that mean we can't use 98? Or if we do, we can't use any of the special features?

Based upon my experience with VPC7 for Windows, it just means you can't use any of the special features - for instance, mouse integration (without the mouse integration, once you click on a VPC window, it takes over your mouse and you can't escape the bounds of that window without releasing it with a key combination; with mouse integration, you just mouse along). I am running several different x86 operating systems under VPC7 for Windows on a Pentium box; the only ones I've had problems with are Plan 9 (and that's probably just my incompetence, as others have been successful) and Fedora Core 2 (and the latter is a known issue).

[CmdrLaForge]

My #1 tip for VPC: Use the absolute minimum version of Windows you need, and avoid XP at any cost. Really.


Are there any benchmark comparisons between XP and 2000 (on the same machine) ? That would be really interesting. I just need any Windows for MS Project and some banking sofware.

[SeanMcg]

Disable 90% of the services XP runs in the background (Does a desktop really need wireless zero config enabled by default?!?!?)...

Good list of stuff. In addition to the disabling themes, set your background to black. That will take some of the load off of the video emulator.

BTW, speaking of video, is there no other card that can be emulated except the S3 Trio especially given Apple's use of standard video cards (cards with PC counterparts)? Will Core Image/Video improve this situation if MS writes for it?

I realize the entire chipset is being emulated, but have they improved the specs over version 6? I can't find the specs on their website. I am not looking for gaming capability. What I want is improvement so that the chipset keeps up with hardware requirements for the operating system.

[GetSome681]

Are there any benchmark comparisons between XP and 2000 (on the same machine) ? That would be really interesting. I just need any Windows for MS Project and some banking sofware.

In my experience with vpc6, win2k is much faster than xp.

[Cooknn]

...On the G5 it might even allow to play older 3d Titles.
Grand Prix Legends anyone? That title is over 6 years old. Caps out (and looks great) at 36fps. Maybe even on-line racing with VROC? Man, that would be SWEET :eek:

[amin]

Win XP got a lot slower on VPC 6 when I installed SP2. I went to MS's site and this is apparently a known issue, but they do not offer a solution.

[CmdrLaForge]

In my experience with vpc6, win2k is much faster than xp.

I guess we can assume the same is true for VPC 7. Can we?

[displaced]

I guess we can assume the same is true for VPC 7. Can we?

I'll eat my hat if it's any different :)

VPC's handy for running specific Windows apps. You're most certainly not going to be doing day-to-day stuff (file organisation, web browsing, email, photo manipulation etc) on the emulated PC. So really 95% of XP's 'improvements' over Win2k will be pointless in that situation. Even for coders, there's nothing really XP-specific that would mean 2K wouldn't do (although that's not intended as a catch-all statement!). VPC lets the emulated PC access the host Mac's hard disks natively, so there's nothing stopping you keeping the data you use in the emulated PC nicely organised within your existing OS X home folder.

I guess what I'm saying is treat VPC as an enabling tool to allow you to use specific apps that you require. Start by picking the leanest version of Windows you can get away with. Then, strip down that Windows installation to the minimum needed to run the app you're after, and disable all the bells, whistles, services and programs that aren't necessary.

Also, look at VPC as a sandbox. Use something like Virex on the Mac to scan files for macro viruses before using them within VPC. That way, you avoid having to bog down the emulated machine with a virus scanner. Do all your normal internet use safely on the Mac, and only use IE in the emulator for testing. If you need emulated IE for banking, look at locking down the emulated IE so it can only be used for the banking site. Avoid IE and Outlook if possible. Try Firefox on the Mac, or even Firefox within VPC (technically they should handle sites the same, but you never know!).

Keep the thing lean and isolated. Store your data outside of the virtual machine, in your Mac's home folder. Then, when it's just right, make a backup of the Virtual PC disk image. That way, if and when Windows pukes all over itself, you've got a nice clean system to copy across and work from, with all your data protected on the Mac.

Hope some of that diatribe's useful!

[MikeBike]

Here's my experience with the product.

- Use it to write some ASP.Net pages for work:
1) Get Dreamweaver, which has "Code Completion" for C# and VB.NET ASP pages. Microsoft's web matrix, is free, but takes a long time to load, paging is slow, And it doesn't have Code Completion.

2) You can use Virtual PC -- XP Pro to run IIS web server and test your pages, by sharing a folder on your Mac.

3) VPC will allocate 1/2 of your RAM for it's memory requirements.
I've got 1 gig, so VPC targets 500meg, at actually uses 550. It also uses about 777meg of Virtual memory on my machine. So there is some Disk Swapping when switching applications. ( Run as few applications, concurrently, in Windows XP as possible. But, as you can afford it, Increase your memory to 2gig on a laptop, and probably 3gig on a desktop.

This will allow VPC to keep All of itself in real memory and not in virtual memory( on your hard disk ).

It's usable but, I'd say it's best to try to find a cross-platform solution where ever possible.

If you can connect to work using Microsoft's RDC( Remote Desktop Connection ) thru VPN then that's the preferred way to go.

I will be getting the update.

[SeanMcg]

Win XP got a lot slower on VPC 6 when I installed SP2. I went to MS's site and this is apparently a known issue, but they do not offer a solution.

Not even "upgrade to VPC 7 with XP SP2 pre-installed?" It must really be screwed up ;)

Seriously, though, I wouldn't be surprised if their security "fixes" added more overhead to the system. If you have a pre-sp2 disk image, you might want to compare the number of processes then vs. now. For example, isn't the XP firewall turned on by default under SP2? If it is, I would think that you could use the Mac's firewall instead. Just a thought.

[shamino]

MS says that upgrade cards and accelerators are not supported. Being that I just purchased an upgrade for my machine bringing it from a single 466 7400 to a dual 1.33 7457, I'm a bit concerned.

I wonder if it simply will not work or if I simply cannot be supported for any issues that may crop up if I use it on a machine with an upgraded CPU.

Can anyone who may have a beta of this have anything to add?
When they say "not supported" in this context, what they usually mean is "we didn't test it in that configuration and if you call for tech support with that configuration we'll hang up on you."

Whether or not the program actually works is another matter altogether. Your best bet is to hope someone reading your message can give you a first-hand anecdote. Asking in a wider forum (like an appropriate newsgroup) in a few weeks (when people have had a chance to try it out) may also be a good idea.

[shamino]

Disable 90% of the services XP runs in the background (Does a desktop really need wireless zero config enabled by default?!?!?) and speed should be as good as Home. Home is a really bad version of XP to use. If you can stay away from it DO SO. The default security is worse then what is in XP Pro which is scary as heck.
I would also argue that you should disable all networking services. Do your web surfing with Mac applications. Unless it's absolutely necessary that a Windows app have network access (e.g. a database client), you should be able to eliminate networking altogether in the virtual environment.

And if you do so, you speed things up (by not running unused networking code) and close nearly all of the security holes. Even WinXP Home should be fine in this configuration.

[GetSome681]

Then, strip down that Windows installation to the minimum needed to run the app you're after, and disable all the bells, whistles, services and programs that aren't necessary.



I used to have an article that listed a ton of things you could disable to help speed things up. Someone already went through a few things in this thread, but I'm looking to disable a ton of things in order to get speeds up for the things I want to do. Anyone have a link to the article I'm thinking of, or anything else that would help?

[ericmooreart]

I run VPC 6 on my 867 pb with xp and it crawls. Did I mention it crawls. Windoze NT 4 screams. I'm guessing MicroEvil had to make VPC 7 slower on the G5 so as not to show up PeeCees.

Anyone remeber Real PC and the fix it needed to slow down on the first G4? MicroEvil muscled them out too.

[ijimk]

Do you think we will be able to run old 2d games like say magic online using vpc 7? I hope so here are system specs...

Minimum Requirements:
Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP or Windows NT 4.0
Pentium II 333 MHz
64 MB RAM
600 MB free hard disk space
Video card able to handle 800 x 600 pixels
(1024 x 768 recommended) and Hi Color settings
DirectX 3.0
4X CD-ROM drive
Sound card
Internet connection (56k or better)
Web browser that supports SSL encryption

[NusuniAdmin]

Do you think we will be able to run old 2d games like say magic online using vpc 7? I hope so here are system specs...

Minimum Requirements:
Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP or Windows NT 4.0
Pentium II 333 MHz
64 MB RAM
600 MB free hard disk space
Video card able to handle 800 x 600 pixels
(1024 x 768 recommended) and Hi Color settings
DirectX 3.0
4X CD-ROM drive
Sound card
Internet connection (56k or better)
Web browser that supports SSL encryption

well on my ibook g4 1.2 ghz according to linux the x86 im running is a i586 running at around 500-700 mhz (it changes)

[GFLPraxis]

In my experience with vpc6, win2k is much faster than xp.

And 98 is faster than that. I'm running VPC on my 1 GHz PowerBook G4.
One thing- I only have 256 MB of RAM total in the system. Less than VPC's minimum requirement. Yet 98 runs fine!

(Yes, I plan to upgrade the RAM soon...)

[GetSome681]

And 98 is faster than that. I'm running VPC on my 1 GHz PowerBook G4.
One thing- I only have 256 MB of RAM total in the system. Less than VPC's minimum requirement. Yet 98 runs fine!

(Yes, I plan to upgrade the RAM soon...)

I've tried both win98se and win2k...and win2k was faster for me. Not sure why it's the other way around for you.

[Westside guy]

Maybe you should remind them that the internet is supposed to be accessable to everyone equally and not a platform specific medium. :rolleyes:

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! "Not platform specific" - oh my that's funny!!! Thanks for the laugh!!

* sigh *

The university I work for (*cough* University of Washington *cough*) was trumpeting a big move to a "Web-based" curriculum for their continuing education offerings - this was about a 18 months ago. As our department's Web person, I was asked to sign up and evaluate this new system. Well, turns out it's not Web-based at all. Actually, it is a bunch of ActiveX programs that you download and then run on your (Windows) machine.

I took the time to write to the director of their program, and explained what "Web-based" actually is supposed to mean (as opposed to "use the Web to distribute stuff", which was what they were doing), and why we wouldn't be participating. She wrote back and basically sounded like she agreed with me - but they'd outsourced the development of this to save money so they were stuck.

Our university is, as a whole, quite friendly to Macs and the *nix crowd - but pinhead bureaucrats can still muck things up.

[srdashiki]

M$

Dammit, giving us XP Pro. VP6 ran faster the older the version of windows you ran. 98 better than 2000 etc. And now I gotta find my ol win98 cds cuz why use XP on VPC when it uses more computing power etc to emulate. Run something easy on the emulator andf you should be fine. VPC IS NEVER INTENDED FOR GAMING. Ever.

[BWhaler]

I used to have an article that listed a ton of things you could disable to help speed things up. Someone already went through a few things in this thread, but I'm looking to disable a ton of things in order to get speeds up for the things I want to do. Anyone have a link to the article I'm thinking of, or anything else that would help?

I don't have it, but I really hope you find it. I want this to be as fast as possible.

I am torn with which version to install. I really want speed, but XP for all of it's problems is the version which MS has put the most security focus on. (I still know it is porous, and it generally sucks.)

I suspect I will try the XP version, and hopefully it will be fast enough for what I need...the once a quarter loading of a windows utility.) If that is no good, then I will trade down, er, up, to an older version.

Oh, and the first thing I will be doing is uninstalling IE and Outlook Express. Bug city...

[MBMatt11]

I used to have an article that listed a ton of things you could disable to help speed things up. Someone already went through a few things in this thread, but I'm looking to disable a ton of things in order to get speeds up for the things I want to do. Anyone have a link to the article I'm thinking of, or anything else that would help?
blackviper.com is a good site for this.

[nexus810]

what abotu these sys requirements.

Win 98/ME/2000/XP
P3 600 Mhz. Athlon K7 600 Mhz or faster
256 MB
32 MB direct X 9 compliant video card
Direct X 9.0b sound device
250 MB free on Harddrive

I have a Dual 2ghz G5 with 1.5 gig of memory and plenty of harddrive. Radeon 9600

[Cooknn]

what abotu these sys requirements.

Win 98/ME/2000/XP
P3 600 Mhz. Athlon K7 600 Mhz or faster
256 MB
32 MB direct X 9 compliant video card
Direct X 9.0b sound device
250 MB free on Harddrive

I have a Dual 2ghz G5 with 1.5 gig of memory and plenty of harddrive. Radeon 9600
Is VPC 7 going to support Direct X?

[Laslo Panaflex]

My friend who has demoed VP 7 said that there is no native graphic card support, but there is a setting in the memory prefereces to tell the vitual PC how much vram to use, unfortunately, it only allows for 16MB :(

Who knows, maybe the final version is different from the beta.

[irock]

Will VPC7 support USB flash drives? I know that VPC6 doesn't even recognize flash drives.

[SiliconAddict]

And 98 is faster than that. I'm running VPC on my 1 GHz PowerBook G4.
One thing- I only have 256 MB of RAM total in the system. Less than VPC's minimum requirement. Yet 98 runs fine!

(Yes, I plan to upgrade the RAM soon...)

I'd slit my wrist before EVER using Win 9x ever again. Have I told you folks about a dream I had one day after a very stressful day of dealing with 98 crashes office wide because of memory issues. My dream ended up being of running around MS's campus with a broken Windows 98 CD hunting down the developers of Win 9x and gutting them. I hate that OS to a level that borders on the maniacal. Windows NT and its children W2K, WXP, and to a lesser extent W2K3 are the only Windows OS’s I will ever touch again. I don’t care how well Win98 is tweaked. You look at a 9x box wrong and it will either crash on you or shut down wrong. NEVER AGAIN. NEVER!

[Kid Red]

I find it funny that on M$'s site, they tout better graphics, cleaner graphics-

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/images/ftrsfull_vpc_02.gif

What moron uses a compressed gif image to show clean graphics which sport multiple blends? I'd be horrified if that's what VP 7 looked like on my 23" HD ASD.

[Warlock7]

I hope it has native video support :)

Nope, no such luck. It doesn't have native graphics card support. They aren't getting anymore money from me because of that. :mad:

[rkevwill]

I just have to mention, to those saying VPC 6 is too slow to use, you should adjust the preferences (in macspeak) within the windows operating system that Connectix suggested back in the old days. Meaning, disabling auto update, etc etc etc. Also, if you are accessing the internet directly, as opposed to using the macs internet connection, you are opening yourself up to all the related viruses that windows is famous for. If you ARE accessing the internet through the shared mac connection, there is no need for all the various and sundry virus apps that slow things down.(unless you are using win IE, and why would you?) Anyway, perhaps you need to visit the MacWindows site.

I use VPC 6 with Win2000 daily, to remotely access my computer at work, and it is faster than my old 300mhz P2 laptop. No, its not a gaming machine, but it runs office and my remote access app just fine thank you. Also,, I allocate 50% of my 1.5 gig of ram to VPC, and from what I hear, that makes a huge difference.

[Ti-maniac]

Quick question, this is my first post.
I have been with VPC since its earliest days. When I got to VPC6, and it was very slow and useless on my G4 powerbook I gave up on it. Before I venture into 7, and spend more money, does it work any better? Or is it still very slow and cumbersome to use?

I would appreciate an unbiased opinion on this.

Thank you in advance,
Ti.

[macidiot]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! "Not platform specific" - oh my that's funny!!! Thanks for the laugh!!

* sigh *

The university I work for (*cough* University of Washington *cough*) was trumpeting a big move to a "Web-based" curriculum for their continuing education offerings - this was about a 18 months ago. As our department's Web person, I was asked to sign up and evaluate this new system. Well, turns out it's not Web-based at all. Actually, it is a bunch of ActiveX programs that you download and then run on your (Windows) machine.

I took the time to write to the director of their program, and explained what "Web-based" actually is supposed to mean (as opposed to "use the Web to distribute stuff", which was what they were doing), and why we wouldn't be participating. She wrote back and basically sounded like she agreed with me - but they'd outsourced the development of this to save money so they were stuck.

Our university is, as a whole, quite friendly to Macs and the *nix crowd - but pinhead bureaucrats can still muck things up.

So are you SOL using a mac with that department? I always thought UW was a haven for Macs...

[macidiot]

Beck, I can almost 100% guarantee they will not allow this. I am in law school and if there is one thing law schools despise above all others, it is cheating. Which is one thing this would allow you to do. The program we use at school to take exams (on Windows) reboots your system, locks you out of all other programs, and dumps you into a very very basic text editor. Attempts to circumvent this cause an error in the program/mark it on the exam disk. Not what you want to be dealing with during your 3 hour contracts final.

Now imagine you have a window that is locked down (your emulated XP), but you have access to all your class notes and the internet via the mac the emulated XP is running on. Trust me, this will not fly. Even if your exams are open book (none of mine were), running two OSes will be seen as weird/suspicious.

Just borrow/rent a laptop. It will be less of a hassle.

-p-

Would that be nyu?

[Warlock7]

I've always run it like that, I wouldn't waste my time with AntiVirus software etc, I have it on the Mac side. The only difference is that I run it with 512 MB RAM allocated to VPC with Me, the new minimum requirement. There are some programs that run better than on a comparable 266 MHz Windows box, which is the speed of the emulated chip under VPC6, that I have sitting around the house running Me, but it can't run anything that is graphics intensive due to the max 16 MB of VRAM that can be assigned to the system. There are also issues with the networking capabilities of the software. If you include an IP and associated host name in the HOSTS file of the Windows side of the software it's not recognized, same if you include it in the Mac side, this renders many programs useless on the PC side. With only the same 16 MB of VRAM available under the new VPC7 it's no real improvement. MS is claiming a 10-30% improvement which doesn't justify the $250 with no upgrade path currently available.

[shamino]

$250 with no upgrade path currently available.
I wouldn't say "available next month" equates to "unavailable".

Upgrades from versions 5 and 6 will cost $100, not $250, unless you feel that you have to have it NOW and can't wait another minute for your fix.

[Warlock7]

I wouldn't say "available next month" equates to "unavailable".

Upgrades from versions 5 and 6 will cost $100, not $250, unless you feel that you have to have it NOW and can't wait another minute for your fix.


I think the key word that you left out, which I didn't, was currently, which when it comes between not and available does equate to currently unavailable. :cool:

[weldon]

So we're still stuck with the same video issues? I really only need VPC for QuickBooks. I tried running it on my 12" PB G4, but it was too slow. I just saved all the paperwork until I could get to my PC. I'd use the Mac version but the files aren't compatible. Maybe the speed increases would make it more tolerable.

Still, if VPC offered DirectX support with native drivers for the video card, I'd consider getting a PowerMac G5 to replace my Windows box. Oh well, maybe next year...

[Warlock7]

Quick question, this is my first post.
I have been with VPC since its earliest days. When I got to VPC6, and it was very slow and useless on my G4 powerbook I gave up on it. Before I venture into 7, and spend more money, does it work any better? Or is it still very slow and cumbersome to use?

I would appreciate an unbiased opinion on this.

Thank you in advance,
Ti.

Hi Ti,

Well, I'm hardly unbiased, but I've owned this particular emulation software for some time and it each update thus far has had fewer and fewer improvements. I'd say, if you need to run Windows software, buy a cheap Windows box. In the long run, it'll save you tons of frustration and you might actually get some value out of it. VPC6, not sure about VPC7 yet, only emulates a PII MMX running at 266 MHz. Save yourself from the headaches. This new version was supposed to have native graphics card support and it doesn't, big surprise from MS. The supposed improvements don't seem worthwhile. Sorry.

[Laslo Panaflex]

As a follow up, my friend says that Virtual PC says the processor speed is a 686 533mhz when he goes to my computer properties, and he is running a dual 2gig G5! Sorry, that along with no native graphics support mean that there is no possible way for decent gaming, if people were so inclined.

Again, he tested a demo, maybe the final release is different, hopefully.

[Deslock]

Will VPC7 support USB flash drives? I know that VPC6 doesn't even recognize flash drives.
Virtual PC 6.1 recognizes my Sandisk Cruzer Micro 512MB (running Win2k SP4 on my wife's G4 iBook).

[Warlock7]

As a follow up, my friend says that Virtual PC says the processor speed is a 686 533mhz when he goes to my computer properties, and he is running a dual 2gig G5! Sorry, that along with no native graphics support mean that there is no possible way for decent gaming, if people were so inclined.

Again, he tested a demo, maybe the final release is different, hopefully.

So, that's a slight improvement over the 266 PII (586).

The difference between a 586 (Pentium) and a 686 (Pentium Pro) isn't much though.

[BWhaler]

As a follow up, my friend says that Virtual PC says the processor speed is a 686 533mhz when he goes to my computer properties, and he is running a dual 2gig G5! Sorry, that along with no native graphics support mean that there is no possible way for decent gaming, if people were so inclined.

Again, he tested a demo, maybe the final release is different, hopefully.

Thanks for the interesting data point. How much memory does your friend's Mac have, and how much is he allocating to VPC?

Thanks.

[nydoofus]

Would that be nyu?

Hah, that's what I first thought as well.

[Freg3000]

As a follow up, my friend says that Virtual PC says the processor speed is a 686 533mhz when he goes to my computer properties, and he is running a dual 2gig G5! Sorry, that along with no native graphics support mean that there is no possible way for decent gaming, if people were so inclined.

Again, he tested a demo, maybe the final release is different, hopefully.

That is what it says on my Dual 1GHz G4 though..... :confused:

[aswitcher]

How well will VP7 likely run on my 17"PB 1.5 1Gig ram, 128vram...?

Does everything else slow to a crawl when your run it?

[JOD8FY]

That is what it says on my Dual 1GHz G4 though..... :confused:

Do you have VPC 7? Have you tried any games? If you have it, you must be running XP Pro - have you disabled any features to make it faster?

Thanks,
JOD8FY

[Freg3000]

Do you have VPC 7? Have you tried any games? If you have it, you must be running XP Pro - have you disabled any features to make it faster?

Thanks,
JOD8FY

Nope, I'm running VPC 6, that is why I am confused as why we have the same emulated specs.

[amin]

I wonder if the stripped-down version of XP designed to compete with Linux in "developing countries of Asia" (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/08/11/thailand.xplite.ap/) would be a good OS to run in XP. I figure it would have at least take up less space and be cheaper. Too bad it's not available in the US.

[Westside guy]

So are you SOL using a mac with that department? I always thought UW was a haven for Macs...

Well the university as a whole has a strong Mac presence, at least when it comes to the computing folks - but IT decisions are often made by bureaucrats without actually consulting the people who actually have the relevant knowledge.

At a lower level, the Mac support varies widely from department to department. UW's Computer Science program is almost exclusively Microsoft based, for example, even at the server end (Lord knows why).

And where I'm at: my boss, the director of computing in our department, is very much anti-Mac - in part because he prefers a homogeneous system environment for managing (don't ask me to defend that because the first thing I think of is "Blaster" and "Netsky"), and in part because we get a lot of desktop donations from Intel. However a significant number of our grad students are getting powerbooks, and several of our faculty as well - so we support them "unofficially". That means some of us IT folks who are Mac users do the support. ;)

As an off-topic aside, I do see a few Windows converts at work; but where OS X is currently making huge inroads is with the users who have had some exposure to *nix. That's a larger group than you might think, at least in a technical field.

[Warlock7]

That is what it says on my Dual 1GHz G4 though..... :confused:

What OS are you running? I suppose that it's possible that the emulated chip changes depending upon the OS. That's pretty bad if that's the case though.

[Abstract]

If this thing emulates a P-400MHz, I'll be happy. My 650MHz AMD Duron feels as fast as some of the P4 2.2 GHz systems I've used. Its hard to explain, but I'm not a picky, whiney individual. There's always a limitation to using emulators, and I'll deal with them. All I want to know is if it'll run as good as a 6 year old PC. I'm guessing that it will, and if it emulates a 16MB video card, that's quite good if it's emulating a 6 year old PC.

[shamino]

I think the key word that you left out, which I didn't, was currently, which when it comes between not and available does equate to currently unavailable. :cool:
But you're still not being forced to spend $250 on your upgrade unless you're one of those extremely impatient people that would rather die than wait another few weeks.

Sort of like the kid in the toy store that throws a tantrum when his mother says he'll have to wait until he gets home before he can open the package.

[shamino]

Do you have VPC 7? Have you tried any games? If you have it, you must be running XP Pro
Not necessarily. He could've installed an operating system that didn't come bundled with VPC.

[d_p]

Has anyone seen VPC7 or Office 2004 Pro in any retail stores yet?

[shamino]

Nope, I'm running VPC 6, that is why I am confused as why we have the same emulated specs.
Depends on where you're getting these "specs" from. If you're looking at the Windows about box (first page of the system control panel), then it doesn't mean anything. That page doesn't actually run any benchmarks. It just returns the results of the CPUID instruction. That instruction could return "27GHz Pentium 4" or "60MHz 486" and that's what Windows will display. And that display won't have any bearing on actual performance.

In order to find out the performance of the emulated environment, you'll really need to run benchmark software of some kind.

[shamino]

If this thing emulates a P-400MHz, I'll be happy.
It will emulate a processor class of some kind - P-III, P-4, etc.

The actual speed will depend on the speed of the Mac you run it on and what other programs the Mac is running at the time.

The speed reported by the emulator (or by the Windows about box, if it reports any speed) will be, at best, an estimate and, at worst, completely bogus.
My 650MHz AMD Duron feels as fast as some of the P4 2.2 GHz systems I've used.
The MHz Myth (http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/SellAMDProducts/0,,30_177_3532_3839%5E4578,00.html) is not just for comparing Macs against PCs. It applies equally well when comparing any two chips of different architectures.

AMD's processors do more work per clock cycle, so they can do just as much as an Intel chip, while maintaining slower clock speeds. My Athlon-64 system runs at 2GHz, but has a "3200+" rating. In terms of real-world performance, it performs very much like a 3GHz P-4, despite having a clock that's 1/3 slower.

Of course, when dealing with apps that spend most of their time idle (like word processors) there are subjective measurements as well. I doubt a 650MHz Duron can actually do the work of a 2.2GHz P-4. Architecture changes can only gain you so much, and a 3.3x speedup is unlikely. But for typical users, you may never notice enough to care.

[Warlock7]

But you're still not being forced to spend $250 on your upgrade unless you're one of those extremely impatient people that would rather die than wait another few weeks.

I never said that you were being forced to do anything, that's your misinterpretation of what I said.

It doesn't sound to me like the "upgrade" is worth the money anyhow. It isn't coming with the useful features that would actually make a noticeable performance increase that were supposedly going to be included, like the native graphics support that was being touted. This is typical of MS, no real added value, much like the Office upgrades.

Sort of like the kid in the toy store that throws a tantrum when his mother says he'll have to wait until he gets home before he can open the package.

Wow. You've made some interesting assumptions based upon very little information. From my perspective, nobody seemed to have been "throwing a tantrum". I just stated some simple straighforward facts, while you appear to have assumed that I was saying something else. It seems to me that you are reading something more into what I posted than what I intended. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough for you.

[BWhaler]

I wonder if the stripped-down version of XP designed to compete with Linux in "developing countries of Asia" (http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/biztech/08/11/thailand.xplite.ap/) would be a good OS to run in XP. I figure it would have at least take up less space and be cheaper. Too bad it's not available in the US.

Getting it isn't the problem. The problem is nothing in the OS will be in English. And no, MS is "smart" and foresaw this idea and disabled English as an option.

[wdlove]

Has anyone seen VPC7 or Office 2004 Pro in any retail stores yet?

If you purchase the Office 2004 then Virtual PC will be bundled together. VPC is due to be delivered in October, so don't expect to see it in stores until then. I pre-order Office 2004. Microsoft has already sent me just the Office 2004 Upgrade CD.

[Frobozz]

Don't care about VPC at all, but have to ask why someone would pay $249 for it when you can buy a PC for about that price anyway.

Well, you're really talking about no less than $600 for a comparable PC speed-wise with WinXP Pro. But your point is still valid-- why get this when a PC is so relatively cheap?

For the most part, it's the integration between the Mac and PC environment, and the (eventual) ability to install and RUN multiple versions of a PC on the same machine. This is great for QA departments.

[JOD8FY]

Well, you're really talking about no less than $600 for a comparable PC speed-wise with WinXP Pro. But your point is still valid-- why get this when a PC is so relatively cheap?

The reason I want VPC for gaming is because I have a laptop and when I travel, I'd like to have something to entertain me. Since I already have several PC games, I would like to play them on my PB when I travel.

JOD8FY

[rteichman]

The reason I want VPC for gaming is because I have a laptop and when I travel, I'd like to have something to entertain me. Since I already have several PC games, I would like to play them on my PB when I travel.

I just broke down and bought OS X based games :)

[uocooper]

The thing that pisses me off is that people that bought VPC 6 to use on their G5's when VPC 7 was due out "any moment" have to spend another $100 on the upgrade for VPC 7. If they bought Office X at the same time, MS gave them Office 2004 for shipping & handling. No such deal with VPC. :mad:

[BWhaler]

Amazon is showing a shipping date of September 13th.

[Trekkie]

Well, you're really talking about no less than $600 for a comparable PC speed-wise with WinXP Pro. But your point is still valid-- why get this when a PC is so relatively cheap?

How about ease of use? not having to flip between two computers every time you want to run some different application, or if you have a particularly closed minded service that only supports a PC (online banking) because it's hard coded to look for IE for Windows...

[Warlock7]

It will emulate a processor class of some kind - P-III, P-4, etc.

[Trekkie]

Amazon is showing a shipping date of September 13th.

I just want it to be here roughly the same time my new iMac is. Of course that'd be relying on Apple to ship this month too ;)

Seriously though to close out the quarter you'd think Apple would be doing everything they can to ship as much as possible of non-iPod stuff to make sure they look viable for both brands

[wdlove]

The thing that pisses me off is that people that bought VPC 6 to use on their G5's when VPC 7 was due out "any moment" have to spend another $100 on the upgrade for VPC 7. If they bought Office X at the same time, MS gave them Office 2004 for shipping & handling. No such deal with VPC. :mad:

If you purchase Office 2004 then VPC 7 is part of the package. It also applies to the upgrade purchase.

[BWhaler]

Interesting that the version without an operating system is shipping significantly later...November 8th.

[~kilroy~]

Interesting that the version without an operating system is shipping significantly later...November 8th.

Its because the SUCKERS( I mean people), who just have to have it now, will fork out the extra $150 to get it. If they put the non bundled version out first Bill would make less money.

[JOD8FY]

Interesting that the version without an operating system is shipping significantly later...November 8th.

Where did you read that? That is kind of strange. I hope it comes out sooner...

JOD8FY

[BWhaler]

Where did you read that? That is kind of strange. I hope it comes out sooner...

JOD8FY

amazon.com has posted the shipping dates. They are all different based on which version of the product.

I, too, hope it comes sooner.

[freiheit]

Where did you read that? That is kind of strange. I hope it comes out sooner...

Well, hope in one hand and $#!% in the other and see which one fills up first. M$ is going to cash in first and foremost on users who feel the NEED to upgrade and force them to take WinXP with it (it makes WinXP's overall sales figures look better, anyway). Next up they'll cash in on those who read the reviews of VPC7 and feel the NEED to upgrade and will force them to take Win2K. Anyone still left standing after that can get the no-OS version just so that M$ still gets their money.

[kingtj]

I think you're either much more impatient than I am, or you haven't worked enough with the older OS's - if you're THAT worked up over Win '98!

For starters, I spent 6 years doing corporate PC support in an environment that consisted of Windows NT 3.51 initially, and migrated to NT 4.0 after the first year I was there.

In Windows NT, one wrong driver selection and the system would crash with an immediate blue screen of death - completely unrecoverable without reinstalling the WHOLE OS from SCRATCH! Furthermore, you didn't have much of any real "plug and play" capabilities, so even things that should have been "no brainers" like installing modems or network cards could turn into hours of guessing at I/O address, memory address and IRQ settings until it actually started working.

Win '98 may not be the most stable OS around, but changing the hardware around or initially installing it was MUCH easier than NT. Also, many of the issues Win '98 users had with it failing to shut down properly/completely were fixed by downloading the patches available on Microsoft's "Windows Update" site. Others were simply due to things like using a poorly written anti-virus product (McAfee and Norton both put out some real lousy verisons for Windows at various times - yet they were on MANY Win '9x machines as a standard rule).

Especailly with Windows '98 "second edition", Microsoft finally got a lot of things right with it. It was certainly better than Windows ME - which was supposed to be an upgrade to it.....

I'd slit my wrist before EVER using Win 9x ever again. Have I told you folks about a dream I had one day after a very stressful day of dealing with 98 crashes office wide because of memory issues. My dream ended up being of running around MS's campus with a broken Windows 98 CD hunting down the developers of Win 9x and gutting them. I hate that OS to a level that borders on the maniacal. Windows NT and its children W2K, WXP, and to a lesser extent W2K3 are the only Windows OS’s I will ever touch again. I don’t care how well Win98 is tweaked. You look at a 9x box wrong and it will either crash on you or shut down wrong. NEVER AGAIN. NEVER!

[JOD8FY]

Well, hope in one hand and $#!% in the other and see which one fills up first. M$ is going to cash in first and foremost on users who feel the NEED to upgrade and force them to take WinXP with it (it makes WinXP's overall sales figures look better, anyway). Next up they'll cash in on those who read the reviews of VPC7 and feel the NEED to upgrade and will force them to take Win2K. Anyone still left standing after that can get the no-OS version just so that M$ still gets their money.

:sigh: It's unfortunate that that logic is so accurate... :rolleyes:

JOD8FY

[MacFan26]

Dang, I hope this won't be as bad as everyone has been saying in this thread! After all this waiting time I hope it works a lot better than VPC 6. Sucks about the graphics card support, or lack there of it I should say. I won't be purchasing it since I don't really have $250 to spend on software at the moment. I was considering getting it since I thought I'd need it for surviving the CS department, but I can just use the lab computers as a last resort. Besides, I've come this far without having to use any Windows software, so I might as well keep it that way.

[shamino]

From what has been posted so far, it's emulating a Pentium Pro (686), which is just a step above a Pentium 2. Not much improvement there either.
"686" is shorthand for Intel's "Family 7" (as reported by CPUID). This includes the PPRO, P-II, P-III and P-4. Every 32-bit x86 chip after the Pentium is considered a "686" by this standard.

I can almost guarantee you it's not emulating a PPro - that chip has none of the SIMD or MMX instructions - features that a lot of modern Windows programs expect to find and won't work without.

[Mechcozmo]

Win '98 may not be the most stable OS around, but changing the hardware around or initially installing it was MUCH easier than NT. Also, many of the issues Win '98 users had with it failing to shut down properly/completely were fixed by downloading the patches available on Microsoft's "Windows Update" site.


Some guy made his own "Service Pack" for Windose 98. Its unofficial, but I have to say that it is a nice benifit few one of my old computers. Service Pack for 98 SE (http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html)
And don't get me started on win98 or ME. I only used the two AFTER dealing with Mac OS 8.1, and I felt lost, confused, and couldn't understand how they worked...I'll stop here...


And dealing with VPC and USB flash drives, all you need to do is click on the USB button at the bottom of the screen. If you read the USB information, it tells you that you need to enable USB devices manually because they are not shared, but keyboards, mice, and floppies are.
A question on this: Because the Bluetooth that is in my PowerBook is actually connected to the USB bus (check out the Apple System Profiler), what were to happen if I chose to add that to VPC? :confused:

And referring to the iPod/Bluetooth rumor earlier...have you ever tried sending something larger than 700kb over bluetooth? It sucks...A 3MB file, like an average song, would really take a looooooooooooooooooooong time.

[JES]

All I want to know is if I can play Madden 2004. Yes? Then sold! No? Then forget it.

XO,
--JES

[Warlock7]

"686" is shorthand for Intel's "Family 7" (as reported by CPUID). This includes the PPRO, P-II, P-III and P-4. Every 32-bit x86 chip after the Pentium is considered a "686" by this standard.

I can almost guarantee you it's not emulating a PPro - that chip has none of the SIMD or MMX instructions - features that a lot of modern Windows programs expect to find and won't work without.

You are correct, a PentiumPro would be a step backwards from the Pentium2 that was being emulated in VPC6, my mistake. But it seems that some of your informations isn't quite correct either. Family 7 doesn't include the PPRO, the P-II or the P-III as you are suggesting.

From Linux.com (http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=11457)
Intel identifies its various processor using a combination of the family and model codes. Pentium processors are identified by a family code of 5. A family code of 6 covers the PentiumPro and all of its variants. Since the PentiumPro, Pentium II, Pentium III and Celeron are all based on the same processor architecture, they are all part of the P6 family( hence, family code 6). The model code is used to tell the various P6 processors apart, along with the cache size and brand ID, depending on the CPU (it's messy; don't ask).
Intel decided to make a new family code for the Pentium 4. That's where the fun begins.
The average person would think Intel would just increment the family code, making the Pentium 4 part of 'family 7'. That does make sense, but Intel already has a family code 7 processor : the Itanium (it came before the Pentium 4, even though the P4 hit the market first).
Ok, no problem. Just make the Pentium 4's family code 8 instead of 7. Wrong . . . big problem.
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 ran into a bit of a snag with "family 8." For those not schooled in the ways of binary, the decimal number 8 is "1000" in binary. That's four binary digits . . . four bits.
Four bits. Remember that, because it's important.
When Windows NT 4.0 and its six service packs were released, the largest CPU family code was 6. That's "110" in binary . . . only three bits. So the NT code only looks at the first three bits of the CPU family when configuring the system.
If you haven't figured it out by now, the first three bits of 8 are zero, zero and, you guessed it, zero. Windows NT goes wacko when it sees a CPU family zero. Serious wacko. Jack with an axe at the end of The Shining wacko. Since Windows 2000 wasn't in wide release at the time, and Intel wanted to avoid this tech support issue, the family code had to be changed to avoid a conflict with Windows NT.
So now the family code for the Pentium 4 is 15, or "1111" in binary, so the first three bits look like 'CPU family 7' to Windows NT. Of course, this wasn't revealed to software developers outside of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) till the official release of the Pentium 4.

Pentium IV is technically not a member of Family 7 even though the MS OS software will apparently report them that way. Family 7 (seventh generation) includes the Itanium. Family 6 (sixth generation) Intel microprocessors today include Intel Celeron(TM), Pentium(R) II, Pentium II Xeon(TM), Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon processors. Family 5 (fifth generation) includes the Pentium processor and the Pentium processor with MMX(TM) technology.

VPC 6 emulated a Pentium 2 with MMX when running ME. I don't know if that changes depending upon the OS. The actual emulated chip can be found in the "OS" Settings section of the Edit menu under VPC6, I assume that holds true with VPC7 too. A command-T will show it too. This is more specific and accurate than relying in the emulated OS to tell you "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 4", which is what is reported in the System Properties.

[NusuniAdmin]

VPC 6 emulated a Pentium 2 with MMX when running ME. I don't know if that changes depending upon the OS. The actual emulated chip can be found in the "OS" Settings section of the Edit menu under VPC6, I assume that holds true with VPC7 too. A command-T will show it too. This is more specific and accurate than relying in the emulated OS to tell you "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 4", which is what is reported in the System Properties.

I dont see any such properties on the OS settings box

[shamino]

You are correct, a PentiumPro would be a step backwards from the Pentium2 that was being emulated in VPC6, my mistake. But it seems that some of your informations isn't quite correct either. Family 7 doesn't include the PPRO, the P-II or the P-III as you are suggesting.

From Linux.com (http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=11457)
...
Family 6 (sixth generation) Intel microprocessors today include Intel Celeron(TM), Pentium(R) II, Pentium II Xeon(TM), Pentium III and Pentium III Xeon processors. Family 5 (fifth generation) includes the Pentium processor and the Pentium processor with MMX(TM) technology.

My mistake. I thought I remembered Windows report "family 7" on my PPro system, but that obviously has to be wrong - it must've actually said 6.
VPC 6 emulated a Pentium 2 with MMX when running ME. I don't know if that changes depending upon the OS. The actual emulated chip can be found in the "OS" Settings section of the Edit menu under VPC6, I assume that holds true with VPC7 too. A command-T will show it too. This is more specific and accurate than relying in the emulated OS to tell you "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 4", which is what is reported in the System Properties.
FWIW, the P-III system I'm on right now reports itself as "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 3". The P-II system next to it reports itself as "x86 Family 6 Model 3 Stepping 4" and the P-II system on the other side of it reports itself as "x86 Family 6 Model 5 Stepping 1".

I tried to find a comprehensive list of family/model numbers on Intel's site, but this information seems to be scattered throughout the databooks for each individual model processor. Their search page just points you to a Windows app that will tell you what you're running - which is not terribly interesting to me.

Browsing the Linux kernel 2.6 sources, however, I was able to pull together the following table:


Intel family 4: Various 486's (SX, DX, DX/2, etc.)
Intel family 5: Various Pentiums (With and without MMX, overdrive and Mobile versions)
Intel family 6:

Model 0: Pentium Pro A-step
Model 1: Pentium Pro
Model 3: Pentium II (Klamath)
Models 4 and 5: Pentium II (Deschutes)
Model 6: Mobile Pentium II
Model 7: Pentium III (Katmai)
Model 8: Pentium III (Coppermine)
Model 10: Pentium III (Cascades)
Model 11: Pentium III (Tualatin)

Intel family 7: Itanium
Intel family 15:

Model 0: Pentium 4 (unknown variant)
Model 1: Pentium 4 (Willamette)
Model 2: Pentium 4 (Northwood)
Models 4 and 5: Pentium 4: (Foster)

Intel family 31: Itanium 2

The Linux sources don't differentiate between the Celeron/Pentium/Xeon variants of the above. The NetBSD sources (which I also looked up) appear to use cache size as the discriminator.

So anyway, if your VPC is claiming to be F6/M8, then it's claiming to be a Pentium III. As for why they chose Coppermine and not one of the others, that was probably what they were using as their basis for comparison when developing the emulator.

[Jambo]

I once wanted to run a Windows program but I can't exactly remember what it was. Mostly it seemed like a cool idea. I think I had a camera driver that was made for Windows 98. iPhoto came along and thoughts of VPC are now a distant memory.

Probably my kids would like to play PC video games, but I doubt VPC is a great way to do this. The relative sparseness of game titles on the Mac platform is a blessing for parents who don't want brain-dead children.

[Warlock7]

So anyway, if your VPC is claiming to be F6/M8, then it's claiming to be a Pentium III. As for why they chose Coppermine and not one of the others, that was probably what they were using as their basis for comparison when developing the emulator.

That's interesting. I posted the wrong place to get the processor info before. It's in the VPC File menu in the Get Info dialog. It's reporting a Pentium II MMX... Weird.

[Warlock7]

I dont see any such properties on the OS settings box
Sorry about that...
It's under the VPC File menu in the Get Info dialog. Command-I.

[dieselg4]

Don't care about VPC at all, but have to ask why someone would pay $249 for it when you can buy a PC for about that price anyway.
Becuse you have a small desk?

[shamino]

That's interesting. I posted the wrong place to get the processor info before. It's in the VPC File menu in the Get Info dialog. It's reporting a Pentium II MMX... Weird.
Sounds like a bug somewhere. If it's really emulating a P-II (meaning no SSE instructions), it should be reporting as model 3 or 5. If it's emulating a P-III (having SSE), then the get-info dialog should say so.

On the other hand, they may simply not care about the model number. The CPUID instruction also returns an array of bit-flags for specific features (fpu, vme, mmx, sse, acpi, etc.) Intel recommends that software use these bit-flags and not model numbers, in order to account for non-standard configurations (e.g. a P-II without virtual-memory support or an FPU - which might be used in an embedded environment.)

I suppose VPC will work OK as long as they set all these flags correctly. But I would still expect them to use a P-II model number if that's what they claim to be emulating.

If anyone reading this has installed Linux on VPC 7, could you "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and post what you find? This reports much more information than the Windows about box.

[Lancetx]

Becuse you have a small desk?

That's a good one. My reason is because I don't need a second notebook computer just to occassionally run one or two Windows apps when my PowerBook handles everything else just fine. :)

[Warlock7]

Sounds like a bug somewhere. If it's really emulating a P-II (meaning no SSE instructions), it should be reporting as model 3 or 5. If it's emulating a P-III (having SSE), then the get-info dialog should say so.

That very well, could be, after MS got it from Connectix I don't know that they fixed much with the minor upgrade they released.

I'm also wondering if that information is reported differently depending upon what type of OS is being used. XP, for example, isn't supposed to run on a P-II, as far as I know. So, perhaps it emulates or reports a different chip if it's a different OS.

[SeaFox]

Becuse you have a small desk?

Is your desk space worth more than $50 a square foot?

[dieselg4]

Is your desk space worth more than $50 a square foot?
If you could by desk space by the square foot, maybe.

[BWhaler]

Amazon is now showing shipping dates ranging from the end of the month to November, depending on which version.

I figure it's anybody's guess when it is actually going to ship.

I just hope for quality and speed.

[RedLead]

Yes, the Microsoft Virtual PC7 site does say "buy it". If you click the "buy it" link on this page (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=whichver), it takes you to a page that says "Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 for Windows XP Professional, $249 USD - Pre-order". Base on that little bit, I don't think it's shipping and you can pre-order it like all other versions.

According to the Microsoft website, the Virtual PC 7 Mac Edition with Windows XP Professional (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=highlights) is now available for $249. Other flavors of Virtual PC 7 (XP Home, Windows 2000, and OS-less versions) are only available for pre-order at this time. This new version includes many new features to the Mac platform, but most notable is support for the Power Mac G5 and presumably the new iMac G5 as well.

While Microsoft acquired Virtual PC (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/02/20030219155858.shtml) from Connectix primarily for its Windows versions of VPC, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit has promised ongoing active development of the Mac version. Due to changes in the G5 architecture, prior versions of Virtual PC have remained incompatible with the PowerMac G5s. Version 7 was expected initially in January of 2004 (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/01/20040107151459.shtml) at MWSF. After a no-show, VPC 7 was expected in 'the first half of 2004' from Microsoft, but was again delayed (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/05/20040512171958.shtml) in May due to rigorous testing concerns.

[Maxx Power]

If this thing emulates a P-400MHz, I'll be happy. My 650MHz AMD Duron feels as fast as some of the P4 2.2 GHz systems I've used. Its hard to explain, but I'm not a picky, whiney individual. There's always a limitation to using emulators, and I'll deal with them. All I want to know is if it'll run as good as a 6 year old PC. I'm guessing that it will, and if it emulates a 16MB video card, that's quite good if it's emulating a 6 year old PC.

Although, a 6 year old PC wold cost you a lot less....

[wdlove]

Yes, the Microsoft Virtual PC7 site does say "buy it". If you click the "buy it" link on this page (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=whichver), it takes you to a page that says "Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 for Windows XP Professional, $249 USD - Pre-order". Base on that little bit, I don't think it's shipping and you can pre-order it like all other versions.

They seem to be trying to rival the delays of the Power Mac G5 2.5. This is definitely the rule with Microsoft.

[shamino]

XP, for example, isn't supposed to run on a P-II, as far as I know.
Well, MS doesn't support it on one. That doesn't mean it won't work. Unless the system is using SSE instructions, there's no technical reason why it would be incompatible with a P-II. If it's not using MMX, it should even be compatible with a Pentium or a 486 (of course, you may not be able to find such a machine with a motherboard that can support the memory requirements, and it would be pretty slow if you did. But the system should still run.)

It may well run on a P-II, if you have enough memory at a good-enough video card. Of course, most of the P-II systems I know of only have 128M of memory and max-out at 384M - which doesn't make for a comfortable XP environment. And it's hard to find good PCI-based video cards (P-II systems with AGP slots are not common.)

I mention this because, IIRC, Win2K wasn't supposed to run on 486 or old Pentium platforms. But it would work if you installed enough memory. (Of course, finding a 486 motherboard that can accept more than 64M isn't easy.) I've personally run Win2K on a Pentium-90 system with 96M of RAM. Definitely not a fast system, but it ran enough to be usable for basic tasks.

[SeaFox]

Is your desk space worth more than $50 a square foot?
If you could [buy] desk space by the square foot, maybe.

That was an even dumber response than I expected. Who doesn't buy desk space by by the square foot? When I'm buying furniture I look at the actual dimensions of it. I wouldn't want to purchase a desk and come to find once I put my monitor on it there isn't enough room for the keyboard to sit in front of it, or that the tower is hanging off the back!

Next you'll tell me you can't buy a sofa based on how many people it's designed to seat. :D

[dieselg4]

That was an even dumber response than I expected. Who doesn't buy desk space by by the square foot? When I'm buying furniture I look at the actual dimensions of it. I wouldn't want to purchase a desk and come to find once I put my monitor on it there isn't enough room for the keyboard to sit in front of it, or that the tower is hanging off the back!

Next you'll tell me you can't buy a sofa based on how many people it's designed to seat. :D

What I meant was, you can't buy desk space 1 sq ft at a time. If that makes me dumb, then I'm dumb. Ignorance is bliss, so I have heard.

People come in different sizes. A three-person sofa can be alot of sizes - that's more like buying desk space in cubits.

Anyway, slightly more on topic, you might buy Virtual PC over having a second PC if you put some value in not having files on two machines - yeah I know you can network them, but its still annoying. Its also inconvenient to carry around two laptops instead of one, if you're someone who has to travel & use both platforms.

Back off topic, I f you were buying custom casework, that is usally quoted as a price per linear foot, so yeah, I'll concede you do buy desk space by the square foot. (But I would guess that when you're looking at weather you're computer will fit on the desk, you don't take the area of the desk and divide it by the price to determine the price per square foot. You're chsking to see if its deep enough, and wide enough, for your setup.)

[ewinemiller]

But I would guess that when you're looking at weather you're computer will fit on the desk, you don't take the area of the desk and divide it by the price to determine the price per square foot. You're chsking to see if its deep enough, and wide enough, for your setup.

It probably depends on how much you're paying per square foot for your office space or home rent. I once saw a guy justify buying a plasma display because it was cheaper in the long run to by the plasma at 20k than it was to buy the floor standing rear projection set and have it take up that 6 sq ft x whatever he was paying in rent/sq ft. Probably nobody on this site has those kinds of financial decisions to make, but there are some folks who do look at things that way.

[BWhaler]

With all due respect, this may be the dumbest debate of all time.

Pretty soon the two US Presidential candidates may pick up the topic:

Cheney: "Those weak liberals want to take away your God Given Right to own bigger desks. And you just KNOW that's what the terrorists want."

Kerry: "But virtual software is better for the environment. Less pollution and electricity used, to say nothing of less wood used in smaller desks."

:)

[Doctor Q]

Back on topic, please.

[Mechcozmo]

Virtual PC varies quite a bit in the processor reporting. I have seen anywhere from 243 PII to a 1047PII procecssor. In case you are wondering how I got these, I enabled the "Boot From CD" option and stuck my copy of Damn Small Linux into the CD drive. It actually ran, rather surprisingly. But I have found the startup screen to be the best CPU reporting utility I've seen....:D

Oh, and I want to post a picture up here but I can't seem to add an attachment...(tell me and I'll post it up)
It is my PowerBook, running Windoze XP, running Basilisk II (System 7.5.5). It stressed out my PowerBook to the max (who knew you could get 50235 pageouts in a little under 4 minutes???) but it was well worth it. I needed to restart to clear up the RAM though...

[Little Endian]

I am using the beta of VPC 7 and it does'nt seem much faster than VPC 6. I am running it on a imac G4 1Ghz 17" and running Windows 2000 Pro. At this rate I do not intend to upgrade from VPC 6 or at least not until I get a G5 system sometime in December or Jan. Bottom line is that unless you have a G5 there is really no reason to upgrade to VPC 7

[blackcrayon]

I've heard a*ahem* rumor that someone ran some PC benchmarks comparing that VPC 7 beta on a dual 2 Ghz G5 to VPC 6 running on a dual 1.25 G4 with OS 9.

The VPC 6 G4 outran the VPC 7 G5 by about 15% in every test (same hard disk image, same benchmark util, both machines had 2 gigs of RAM, 512 devoted to both virtual machines). The VPC 6 machine was subjectively "snappier" (had to throw that in) especially on disk operations it seemed.

It's unfair to judge a book by it's beta, so let's hope the VPC 7 release version is much faster... All the "debug code" removed, you know how it is ;)

[Hatmac]

VPC 7 / XP Pro shipped from MacMall and should be here Monday. I'll see how it runs on my G5 Dual 2 Gig

Bill

[Lancetx]

VPC 7 / XP Pro shipped from MacMall and should be here Monday. I'll see how it runs on my G5 Dual 2 Gig

Bill

Cool. It'll be nice to finally see some real impressions of the final release version. My order for the upgrade version isn't scheduled to ship until late October or early November. :rolleyes:

[wdlove]

Cool. It'll be nice to finally see some real impressions of the final release version. My order for the upgrade version isn't scheduled to ship until late October or early November. :rolleyes:

So far I haven't got an E.Mail notification about a shipping date for my upgrade. It will be coming directly from Microsoft.

[lefty111]

Well,

Microsoft offers a free alternative to virtual PC. Just use their free Remote Desktop Connection software to connect to somebody else's PC and control it remotely. I did this to use SPSS 12 for windows, which was on a friends PC, and then I emailed the results in a Word document from Outlook back to my Mac. This way you keep that awful PC out of your house, and keep that windows OS and emulation software off from your beloved Mac! LOL.

DBW

[neoelectronaut]

Really?

I've got a old PC in the closet. Maybe that'd be fun to play around with.

[weldon]

Remote Desktop Client is nice, but has a few limitations.

Windows XP Pro (or server) on the remote PC. XP Home won't work.
No 3D graphics so most games don't work (I suppose almost anything that takes full screen won't work)
It's still a bit sluggish, better than VPC and quite useable, but still slower than sitting at the console, even on a 100Mbit LAN.

I use it all the time to check on Outlook from my PowerBook. Works really, really well. To bring this back on topic, the reason that I am disappointed in VPC 7 and will not upgrade is the lack of the direct video card support. Every now and again there is an interesting game on the PC side that I'd like to play. I probably would've bought a PowerMac next time around if I knew I could get the performance of a reasonable Windows system out of it. Maybe Apple should fund the development of this feature to encourage people to buy PowerMacs over iMacs.

[thehand]

but I have windows xp installation disc. is this going to be difficult? :confused:

[NusuniAdmin]

but I have windows xp installation disc. is this going to be difficult? :confused:

mount the cd on ur desktop, start up the virtual pc and it will load off the cd....not too hard :D

[gusanitoverde]

A very smart gentleman in another post quote the following:

"A very open minded and admirable sentiment. Computers are tools. I own lots of tools, and each has its use. I don't grumble when I come across a slotted screw because I have a bias towards my phillips-head screwdriver.

There are many times a Windows machine would make PDA related things easier - loading maps onto SD cards, or fetching golf courses from StarCaddy (I've been using Virtual PC, but that is a blunt tool indeed!) So why not set myself up with a cheap Windows box and a KVM switch, or spend the same money on a used laptop that will take up less space when not in use.

I guess there's this tacit idea in our heads that one box has to do everything. For me it started in 1986, when I got my first computer and started forming my fantasy about a paperless office. Well, almost 20 years later, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of that fantasy, and I'm still awash in paperwork. The computer has in that span of time replaced the typewriter, the stereo, the U.S. Mail, the television, the moviola, and a host of other technologies. We get this idea that it can do everything, and worse, that it SHOULD. (Marketers capitalize on this weakness to convince us that our six-month-old computer is obsolete.) It's this one-box-fits-all philosophy that forces us to choose sides between Windows and Mac machines. But it's a hollow ethic that has generated way too much ire and hot air."

I so much agree with him. I have noticed this in my life as well. I know that running virtual PC in a Mac will not be the same as running Windows on a PC itself. wouldn't just be better to get a good PC and run the windows apps just out of the PC and keep my Mac clean for my mac purposes? I know how technology is getting better and better, however, is of any significance to get obsessed about my Mac to behave like something is not yet? I mean, I am a recent switcher from Windows, and I am so happy with Mac that I would never go back again. But I am trying as much as I can to stay away from my Windows dependency, but Mac is just not quite enough, even tough I know that Mac Hardware and OS X is far superior, but not as broad yet to cover all needs of the PC market today. I think that if there is no Mac absolutely life for me, if I was to but the Office 7 for Mac in order to get VPC included and the suite of Office, I am better off linking my Mac to a PC and share the two computers. I have no need to do this, but I suffer a little being a loyal Mac only user. :confused:

[sinclairZX81]

VPC 7 / XP Pro shipped from MacMall and should be here Monday. I'll see how it runs on my G5 Dual 2 Gig

Bill

VPC7 reports it is a 533MHz PC on my dual 2. the max memory you can give to the PC is 512MB. its pretty crappy.

[SpaceMagic]

I'm using VPC 7 beta version (don't ask how I got it). I reports 567mhz and 352mb RAM on my Stock 1.8 SP G5. I think it's pretty impressive and this is a beta version. Its far less jerky than on my same rammed version 6.1 on a 1Ghz G4 a friend has.

It's actually a whole lot more usable. Can't wait to see VPC7 retail, and if it's suitably priced (without OS pack - I have a volume liscence XP) then I'll buy it!

[NusuniAdmin]

I'm using VPC 7 beta version (don't ask how I got it). I reports 567mhz and 352mb RAM on my Stock 1.8 SP G5. I think it's pretty impressive and this is a beta version. Its far less jerky than on my same rammed version 6.1 on a 1Ghz G4 a friend has.

It's actually a whole lot more usable. Can't wait to see VPC7 retail, and if it's suitably priced (without OS pack - I have a volume liscence XP) then I'll buy it!

ah so you are getting vpc 7, magix? Cool!

Ive tryed out the beta and was impressed, it is faster and at least m$ was not lieing about the UI refreshing better.

[SpaceMagic]

Yeh dark :p I have got it ;) It's really good. I'll purchase the retail version.

[Jovian9]

I have Virtual PC 6 setup on my PB 1.33GHz 17". It reports that the PC is 250MHz and I've assigned it 512MB RAM. It runs good with some things and bad with others. If VPC7 can up that to over 500MHz I think it may be worth the upgrade.

[NusuniAdmin]

VPC 6.1 with my system stats listed below (the ibook) Windows 98 SE reports roughly 290-300 mhz with no applications open (this is reported by a 3rd party mhz reporter).

On windows 2000 pro the same app reports roughly 150-250 mhz.



I am guessing with reviews of the vpc 7 beta and such I might be able to pull 400 with 98se and possibly 350 with 2k.

that would not be too bad, i used to use windows 2k on a 500 mhz amd k-6 machine and it was very usable.

[jaromski]

VPC7 reports it is a 533MHz PC on my dual 2. the max memory you can give to the PC is 512MB. its pretty crappy.

dude,

pc's running microsoft os don't need more than 512mb. that is because the mem manager sux. in fact i have noticed my windows machines run slower with more memory than 512mb. YMMV. but i doubt it.

the emulation layer is the bottleneck. not the memory.

jaromski

[Koree]

Something tells me i won't need to make a counterstrike box. :cool:

[Trekkie]

dude,

pc's running microsoft os don't need more than 512mb. that is because the mem manager sux. in fact i have noticed my windows machines run slower with more memory than 512mb. YMMV. but i doubt it.

the emulation layer is the bottleneck. not the memory.

He's mostly correct. maybe the 640 - 768 range is about where it tops out but anything over 512 on a XP machine is usually a waste of space. 2003 is different though, but that's a server OS.

[Mr. Monsieur]

for a couple hundred dollars more you can buy an inexpensive windoze system...why waste $250 on a lame program that has a terrible track record (and tire out your lovely mac with ugly windoze software), when you can get a whole system for just a little more?

[NusuniAdmin]

what you mean people actually pay for VPC ... heheh

:)

[daveL]

for a couple hundred dollars more you can buy an inexpensive windoze system...why waste $250 on a lame program that has a terrible track record (and tire out your lovely mac with ugly windoze software), when you can get a whole system for just a little more?
Maybe because you're on the road 50% of your life, and it isn't practical or desirable to carry two laptops around?

[Mr. Monsieur]

Maybe because you're on the road 50% of your life, and it isn't practical or desirable to carry two laptops around?

ah...oui, oui...touche...you're right, of course...unless, of course you are trying to build big muscles.
i forget that many people *are* on the road a great deal...what a headache...well...i certainly do *hope* that vpc7 is better...i was just singularly unimpressed by vpc6 and am looking for ways to bypass it... :o

[Hatmac]

Just got VPC / XP Pro today from MacMall. Installed it on my Dual G5 2gig.
List the processor as 533 Mhz with 512m of ram and 16m of video ram.
Installed Visio 2000 and Office 2000 so far. No games yet.
Visio worked as well as it does on my wifes new Dull laptop from her office.
I can't out type MS Word. did'nt try Excel or Powerpoint. I am going to try
autocad 2000 as soon as I can get a copy from work and will report how it seems to work.

If you have to run Windows only software and have a G5. I would think this is an acceptable solution.

Bill

[Euthyphro]

Nice of microsoft to ship all versions of this product except the "upgrade" version. lame.

Edit: ok, after further research, only the XP Pro version is shipping, still lame.

[Lancetx]

Just got VPC / XP Pro today from MacMall. Installed it on my Dual G5 2gig.
List the processor as 533 Mhz with 512m of ram and 16m of video ram.
Installed Visio 2000 and Office 2000 so far. No games yet.
Visio worked as well as it does on my wifes new Dull laptop from her office.
I can't out type MS Word. did'nt try Excel or Powerpoint. I am going to try
autocad 2000 as soon as I can get a copy from work and will report how it seems to work.

If you have to run Windows only software and have a G5. I would think this is an acceptable solution.

Bill

Thanks, that's good to hear. Keep us posted on how it goes under further use.

[Hatmac]

Thanks, that's good to hear. Keep us posted on how it goes under further use.

I loaded Windows 2000 and installed Visio and it seems to run a little bit smoother. However, while I can print to my printer attached to my Airport Extreme Base Station in XP, I get a print error in 2000. The last version of VPC I have is 5. With a G5 I never bought 6.

Any ideas would be extremely helpful

FYI: When loading XP and 2000, XP takes over 2 minutes to boot and 2000 take about 1 minute

PS Visio works fine on both systems with my G5

Bill

[jaromski]

Just got VPC / XP Pro today from MacMall. Installed it on my Dual G5 2gig.

I am going to try autocad 2000 as soon as I can get a copy from work and will report how it seems to work.

Bill


I am very interested to hear your results with AutoCAD. I have been trying to figure how I can migrate my whole operation to Mac, but I use AutoCAD 6+ hrs. a day so I have been stuck on PC.

Thanks,

JaromSKI

[Hatmac]

I am very interested to hear your results with AutoCAD. I have been trying to figure how I can migrate my whole operation to Mac, but I use AutoCAD 6+ hrs. a day so I have been stuck on PC.

Thanks,

JaromSKI

Installed AutoCad 2000 Lite yesterday and it runs very well on VPC in XP Pro. Very usable. On a regular full size drawing, I was able to zoom and pan smoothly and add / move components easlly. My friend sent me a complex drawing because he said it choked his PC and while it taxed my machine it seems to work better than his PC. ( He could not tell me what his PC ran at but it is an older machine )
I think it runs just like it would on a 533mhz PC with 512m of ram.

Bill

Where you could run into problems is with your plotter. I don't need to print anything. I just e-mail drawings back to my office to print them.

[jsfpa]

I've installed VPC7 on my 1.8 single proc G5with 2 gig of memory. I'm happy with the over all performance but the sound is choppy and distorted. I was wondering if anybody else is having the same probelm? :rolleyes:

Thanks,
John

[Hatmac]

I loaded AutoCad LT on my Windows 2000 Pro partition and you can tell the difference in speed. Windows 2000 is faster.

Bill

By the way John. I have the same sound issue on my Dual 2gig G5.
I also had the issue in VPC 5 on a Dual 1gig G4. Never had VPC 6

New:
John
When I use Windows 2000 Pro the sound seems to be OK. XP uses the latest version of Windows Media Player and my copy of Windows 2000 has an older application. And I'm not going on the internet with any MS OS and take a chance of flooding my Mac with all kinds of nasties. Even if they will only infest VPC

[meta-ghost]

Installed AutoCad 2000 Lite yesterday and it runs very well on VPC in XP Pro. Very usable. On a regular full size drawing, I was able to zoom and pan smoothly and add / move components easlly.

it could do this reasonably well with vpc 6. the question i have is how well does it handle large x-ref drawings. any idea?

[solin]

I need your help, please.
All I want to know is if I can run 3D Max with VPC 7.
And how it works.

Thanks for your help.

[Hatmac]

it could do this reasonably well with vpc 6. the question i have is how well does it handle large x-ref drawings. any idea?

Sorry meta-ghost, I'm a LAN design engineer and project manager. I just use AutoCad drawn by others and modify them to create as-builts. I would assume you mean to use in a group. If a 533mhz PC will work a I don't see why you could not create and use X-ref files. Maybe someone else can answer that for you.
Bill

[Kingsfoil13]

I've been having some unfortunate problems, as documented in this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=91312

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be very pleased to hear them.

[gMacMan]

I received my Virtual PC 7 yesterday and promptly installed it on my 1st gen dual 2GHz G5. It locked up my system over and over every time I tried to launch it. Hard lock-ups, at that, kernel panic greyed out screen. I figured it was because I originally installed VPC 6 1 year ago, not knowing it wouldn't work. So I scoured my system getting it all completely uninstalled. Then re-installed VPC 7 and it still crashed, but didn't lock up the system. Eventually it started working, but not reliably. At that point, I had already a call in to MS, which was inundated with calls about VPC 7. They called me back about an hour later and said, "How much memory do you have in your system?" I HAD 2.5GB. MS said they have an issue with machines over 2GB, so I yanked out 512MB and it's been fine since. Pretty speedy, but no SMP support. Since it's emulating a single CPU system, it won't try executing any instructions in parallel. I'd love to see how fast it'd run if it emulated a dual CPU system. I am bummed they didn't include the native graphics card support, but overall, I'm happy. One other note, full screen mode on multi display systems seems to have an issue when the app loses focus off to another display. The VPC hangs when it regains focus until you resize or it loses focus again and focus returns.

[Kingsfoil13]

In the thread linked above, I have documented many troubles -- but also, at last, what seems to be a working VPC 7 in conjunction with 2.5 GB of RAM. The key seems to be a clean install in a clean, brand-new user account.

Who knows?

[meta-ghost]

Since it's emulating a single CPU system, it won't try executing any instructions in parallel. I'd love to see how fast it'd run if it emulated a dual CPU system.

exuse my ignorance but it's only working on one of the cpu's?

[Kingsfoil13]

... One other note, full screen mode on multi display systems seems to have an issue when the app loses focus off to another display. The VPC hangs when it regains focus until you resize or it loses focus again and focus returns.

Since I have it on another user account, I tend to use fast user switching a LOT, so I am switching back into my VPC account often. When I do this, VPC usually has focus, because I was using it when I left -- but it is frozen (visually), though receiving input (sometimes), until i click off of it to the Finder (or something else) and then come back.

I'm running a dual-monitor system, so I am probably inciting all possible trouble - many third-party apps, more than 2GB RAM, dual monitors...

Still, all of these are things which should have been forseen by MS. Probably a very high percentage of G5 users -- THE market for VPC 7 -- have multiple monitors and over 2.5 GB of RAM.

[gMacMan]

exuse my ignorance but it's only working on one of the cpu's?


Let me explain this. 1 CPU is being emulated... Every CPU has a set of instructions. Lets say, in a Pentium, you have an add, a multiply, a divide, and a subtract instruction. If the Windows OS/Application is SMP aware and could ask for simultaneous "add" instructions for more optimal performance, it would do so on an SMP machine. Since the emulated PC is a UP machine, it will not use SMP optimizations. You will see that when instructions reach the OS X level, work will be divided amongst the available CPU's. But you'll see that each CPU will be utilitized only 50% (or 1/(num cpus) * 100) becasuse the guest OS is not aware that multiple "add" or "multiply" or any other instructions CAN be executed in parrallel. Because guest OS will not be SMP optimized, so those 2 "add" instructions will be performed in succession because that is how the guest OS is requesting them, rather than in parallel. What this means is, if you were to be running only virtual pc, and no other apps, you will get nearly the same performance on a single CPU G5 system as on a dual. The only difference is the overhead and background processes running under the covers which will steal a little CPU time. Go ahead, and try it out. Install the CHUD developers tools and disable your 2nd CPU, you'll see that VPC runs at nearly identical speed if it's the only app running on the system .

- G

[wdlove]

Gee, I wonder why my VPC 7 upgrade directly from Microsoft hasn't arrived yet? They already sent me the Office 2004 CD.

[Lancetx]

Gee, I wonder why my VPC 7 upgrade directly from Microsoft hasn't arrived yet? They already sent me the Office 2004 CD.

The VPC 7 Upgrades aren't shipping till November. For some silly reason, MS decided to only ship VPC 7 w/XP Pro and Office 2004 Pro (which includes VPC 7 and XP Pro) for now. :rolleyes:

[meta-ghost]

The VPC 7 Upgrades aren't shipping till November. For some silly reason, MS decided to only ship VPC 7 w/XP Pro and Office 2004 Pro (which includes VPC 7 and XP Pro) for now. :rolleyes:

i called macwarehouse about the upgrade version and they said something like oct.4 (or 8?) for shipping.

[Kingsfoil13]

Now for the latest and greatest (or something: )

Today, I found myself unable to access my machine by ftp, sftp, or ssh - all ways I ordinarily can in different needs. (I know, bad me, bad unsecure ftp.) I went into System Prefs, to see if sharing had somehow been turned off, and instead got an error that I had other firewall software running on the computer. On a hunch, I checked - and it turned out the VPC running XP had come with Service Pack 2 preinstalled - and Windows Firewall was turned on by defualt. It had overruled any settings made in OS X, and suddenly all ports were blocked.

As usual, microsoft thinks it knows better than you what you want.

[SiliconAddict]

As usual, microsoft thinks it knows better than you what you want.

No offense to anyone here but the average user is a dumb***. MS locked down the ports because the average user isn't smart enough to run Windows update.

Example. MS blaster. You know that wonderful worm that came out last september and caused a major headache for every Window user on the net? Last Tuesday I ran across a user who still haven't patched their system. Never mind the patch has been out since July of '03 (Yah you heard right the patch for blaster was out a solid 2 months before the worm came out.) After I literally slapped him upside the head (Sorry even if you are a friend you will get that reaction.) I cleaned his system and applied the patch.

User's treat their computer like a VCR when in most cases its like a car that DOES need some attention from time to time. (In the case of Windows A LOT of attention.)

VPC is invariably tied to the NIC on the Mac in some way or another. Are you really all that suprised that it might be tied that close to the NIC?!!?
I'd personally perfer they get overly anal with security then what they've done in the past. If you don't like it then disable the firewall and take your chances. Since you are running MOS with VPC its not as big of a deal for you but again don't fault MS for actually securing their OS for once.

[Kingsfoil13]

I'd personally perfer they get overly anal with security then what they've done in the past.

Point taken. Overriding the OS X firewall settings is still annoying, though, especially with no notification. If I was 'the average dumb user' it could have taken me quite a while to figure out what 'other third-party firewall software' I was running that made it so I couldn't use SysPrefs.

[Lancetx]

i called macwarehouse about the upgrade version and they said something like oct.4 (or 8?) for shipping.

I hope you're right, but last word from MS is that it wouldn't be until November.

[wdlove]

The VPC 7 Upgrades aren't shipping till November. For some silly reason, MS decided to only ship VPC 7 w/XP Pro and Office 2004 Pro (which includes VPC 7 and XP Pro) for now. :rolleyes:

Thank, I will just have to be patient. At least it's only another month.

[madrobby]

After toying around a while: Windows 98 definitely is/feels faster, even considering VPC7 screams about not supporting it. The VPC Additions installed, but without the new printer support.

The Original Doom runs smoothly inside VPC on my 1 GHz G4 TiBook (64MB of memory for Windows 98). Didn't before with 6.1 (was rather jerky).

Also, handling OS X with VPC in the background (but active) seems better/more smoothly now.

I guess the 10% to 30% figure is quite right. Can't wait to try this on a G5...

Next: Cinebench 2003, wish me luck... :cool:

[madrobby]

Next: Cinebench 2003, wish me luck... :cool:

No luck for me. CINEBENCH 2003 does all the tests, but all the GFX are wrong, and I get impossible results (like CPU rendering 1792 CB-CPU...).