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VirtualPC 7 + QuickBooks Pro 2004

cleo

cleo

macrumors 65816
Original poster
My mom is purchasing QuickBooks Pro to use at home and has two choices, either installing it on my brother's crappy Win XP laptop (crappy enough that he just switched and bought a PB) or buying VPC 7. I'm pretty confident that for what she'd be using it for (just QuickBooks for like two hours a week) and on her hardware (G4 800 with 512 MB RAM), VPC would be a good solution. But I guess she read an article in the paper about VPC not being perfect (duh) and is wary about it. Does anyone have any relevant experience with this stuff that will help ease her mind? Also, a question: she has a USB floppy drive from the Apple Store... there's no risk of QuickBooks not being able to access it from within VPC, is there?

Thanks, on behalf of my mom. 🙂
 
is there a reason she isn't going with the Mac version of Quickbooks Pro? I know that Intuit stopped supporting the Mac version but they re-entered the Mac market again last year. By using it she wouldn't need VPC at all.
 
If she can't get a Mac version, and your brother's PC is available, I'm not sure why she'd spend $200+ to run it slowly on her Mac instead of just running it on your brother's PC. VPC is great (well, not bad) if you own a laptop and need the capability to do Windows work at times. But, otherwise, just buy a $300 PC and get five times the speed for barely more $$. Or use an old PC, which is what I think your Mom should do - assuming, again, that a Mac version isn't available.
 
My wife just switched to Mac. I got her the Mac version of Quick Books Pro. If I remember correctly, you can get some money back ($100??) if you are converting from the MS version to the Mac version.
 
She tried the Mac version and I guess there were some issues with the payroll stuff not playing nice with her accountant's Windows version. As for the alternatives, the old laptop is *really* unreliable and there really isn't space for getting a cheap desktop (aside from the fact that it's just kinda wasteful to buy an entire computer for one program). Speed isn't that important; I mean, it has to be functional, of course, but it's just accounting, not like she's gaming or something. Money really isn't an issue on this, as it's not coming directly out of my mom's pocket... it's more of just, will it work?
 
It should work - VPC runs pretty much anything that isn't graphics intensive or reliant on specific PC hardware, and so it should run Quick Books just fine. If QB isn't very graphical, it might even run fairly well. It won't be fast, but it will run. And probably reasonably quickly.
 
Sounds like VPC is probably the answer.

Another option would be to have a headless PC running somewhere that she can Remote Desktop to. I do this at work for the few things I can't do on my Mac. I have a crappy PC in the corner with a power cord and network connection plugged into it. Works like a charm! 😀
 
nosen said:
Another option would be to have a headless PC running somewhere that she can Remote Desktop to. I do this at work for the few things I can't do on my Mac. I have a crappy PC in the corner with a power cord and network connection plugged into it. Works like a charm! 😀
Click to expand...

What's Remote Desktop? Because I think there is a headless Win98 box sitting around the house somewhere...
 
cleo said:
What's Remote Desktop? Because I think there is a headless Win98 box sitting around the house somewhere...
Click to expand...

It's a free download from Microsoft. www.mactopia.com

It let's you run applications and access files on a PC from your Mac.

Unlike VPC which is an emulator, this is just a "window" into a connected PC. So it is much, much faster. And it's free.

Quickbooks on the Mac is really solid BTW. Comes with a free payroll program from aatrix.
 
cleo said:
What's Remote Desktop? Because I think there is a headless Win98 box sitting around the house somewhere...
Click to expand...
Just like BWhaler said, its a free program that allows you desktop access a PC on your network. However, I think you would need to upgrade Win98 to XP. I can't remember, but I don't think Win98 had remote access. 😕

But, it will run better than VPC because the only program that your Mac has to run is the Remote Desktop software...Windows and whatever apps are run on the PC. With VPC your Mac has to run everything (and with my 550Mhz PBook, it really wouldn't be very effective).
 
nosen said:
However, I think you would need to upgrade Win98 to XP. I can't remember, but I don't think Win98 had remote access. 😕
Click to expand...
Also, I'm not sure QB runs on Win98 anymore. Perhaps it does, but not for long.
 
Ok, here's another thought. The major problem with the XP laptop is its screen... I guess my brother banged it up enough that there's something wrong with the connection to the screen, so it randomly just goes out from time to time. But from what you're saying, it sounds like I could install QB on the laptop, put the laptop on a shelf, and then use this Remote Desktop doodad to let her do the actual work on the Mac (which is the ultimate goal, because she really loves sitting at her desk with her beloved iMac)... is that right? If I'm following correctly, then I have one more question: when my mom backs up her files to give them to the accountant, does she use the floppy drive on the PC or on the Mac? And is Remote Desktop fairly easy to set up?
 
Cleo, you are correct on all counts. You will be able to RDP (Remote Desktop) to the laptop just fine. You will also be able to use the laptops floppy drive. Essentially what RDP does is make your Mac a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) device for the PC. You control the PC just like you would normally, except your doing it through a window on your Mac!

Oh, it's not hard to set up either. You need to enable Remote Administration on the PC, and know that the PC's IP address is on your home network. Open the Remote Desktop software on your Mac, plug in the IP address and configure things like window size, etc. Then once you connect you'll probably be prompted for the username and password...which you just log in using whatever credentials you normally use for the PC.
 
nosen said:
except your doing it through a window on your Mac!
Click to expand...

Actually you can make it full screen on your mac as well, which can get really trippy. Check out the pics below. I've been using this setup to access my PC at home and one of our severs at work with Win 2000 server, specifically setup for us to do ram/processor intensive FPGA compiles so that we don't have to tie up our desktops for hours at time.
 

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