Looking to switch..question first..

[DeadlyBreakfast]

Ok...I'd love to switch but there is one thing I would like to know if someone has any experience in this area I would greatly appreciate your input.

Virtual PC is my question....specifically VB6 and VB.net in that environment. Has anyone ever had any experience using either and if you have on which OS in VPC.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Seeing OSX really caught my eye and has had me buying / reading eveything I can get my hands on about Apple and this is the only burning question I have. I really love the "flow" of the OS. It appeals in a way that no Windows version ever has. I've skinned XP in a futile attempt to simulate and stimulate but it just doesn't do it for me.

Other then that the only other reason I would even keep my PC is for Ultima Online.......but thats another story.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[Kid Red]

In case no one here can answer your question I'd hate for you to not switch so I'd recommend going to http://www.connectix.com who makes VPC and checking their doc on various OS's. I would venture to say everything should work as if on a PC and from the majority, W2K Pro is the fastest windows OS on VPC so I'd recommend getting that if you don't have a current copy.

Hope you find your anwser and that allows you to switch

 

[macktheknife]

I'm a recent switcher. I have Virtual PC (VPC) on a 550 TiBook, and I had also tried installing VB 6.0 on VPC. Sorry to tell you this, but it didn't work as it would crash in the final stages of the installation. I tried it 3 times before I finally gave up. All the files would write to the hard drive, but it would crash when I tried to start it. I can't speak for VB.Net as I had not tried installing it on VPC.

If you do decide to switch, I *highly* recommend REALbasic, which is basically (no pun intended) VB for the Mac. Check it out at:

http://www.realbasic.com/

http://mac.oreilly.com/news/realbasic2_1001.html

You can build applications for both the Mac and PC, and you can import VB projects from the PC. It's won a ton of awards and has earned a lot of raves. Disclosure: I don't work for REALbasic, but I just bought a copy a few weeks ago and I love it.

 

[Taft]

Re: Looking to switch..question first..

Originally posted by DeadlyBreakfast

Virtual PC is my question....specifically VB6 and VB.net in that environment. Has anyone ever had any experience using either and if you have on which OS in VPC.

If you are asking if it works, then the answer is yes. I've had very few things fail to run under VirtualPC.

But speed can be an issue. It is, of course, a emulation environment and because of this, things can run significantly slower. But I've personally had some pretty good results with VPC. The things I use in the Windows world run pretty well under it. Everything I need to use is useable. And I'm running only a 400 MHz G4.

However there are occasionally small lags that can be a little frustrating. Its similar to working in a VMware environment on Windows, if you've ever tried that. And I've seen other people complain pretty loudly about speed.

I think you'd be happy with it. And small lags in an emulation environment is no reason not to switch to a Mac .

Taft

 

[Taft]

Originally posted by macktheknife
I'm a recent switcher. I have Virtual PC (VPC) on a 550 TiBook, and I had also tried installing VB 6.0 on VPC. Sorry to tell you this, but it didn't work as it would crash in the final stages of the installation. I tried it 3 times before I finally gave up. All the files would write to the hard drive, but it would crash when I tried to start it. I can't speak for VB.Net as I had not tried installing it on VPC.

That could be a Windows issue. I've seen computers blow up (not literally) when installing MS developer environments. It happenned a few weeks ago with a coworkers machine and .Net studio. Thats the price you pay for having all of your applications woven into the very fabric of your OS. When will MS learn...

Taft

 

[iShater]

Re: Re: Looking to switch..question first..

Originally posted by Taft


If you are asking if it works, then the answer is yes. I've had very few things fail to run under VirtualPC.

But speed can be an issue. It is, of course, a emulation environment and because of this, things can run significantly slower. But I've personally had some pretty good results with VPC. The things I use in the Windows world run pretty well under it. Everything I need to use is useable. And I'm running only a 400 MHz G4.

However there are occasionally small lags that can be a little frustrating. Its similar to working in a VMware environment on Windows, if you've ever tried that. And I've seen other people complain pretty loudly about speed.

I think you'd be happy with it. And small lags in an emulation environment is no reason not to switch to a Mac .

Taft

What have you managed to run under VPC? When you say "slow" it means crawling? or simply slower than my Mac?

Thanks!

 

[Rajj]

It depends on your Cpu speed, but it is still super slow compared to just having a winbox!!

I have VP5 on my TiBook 400 and it gets the job done, but it takes for ever and ever and ever and ever... you get the point

 

[bousozoku]

REALbasic is a lot like VB and Borland's C++ Builder, JBuilder, and Delphi. It's certainly a quick way to get an application running.

As far as running Windows with Virtual PC, I checked the speed of my virtual Win98SE machine last night with the DirectX diagnostics (dxdiag) and found that my dual 800 had been reduced to a Pentium MMX machine running at about 533 MHz. I had a few things like folding@home running a the time so maybe it would be faster without those. I may try again.

It's not unbearable, just slow, especially after using a 2 GHz machine.

 

[RBMaraman]

I went to my local authorized Mac Reseller the other day, and I was totally shocked by what I saw. This store was recently bought out by another authorized Mac Reseller, and the new owners forced the store to begin using a windows based software for sales. I was appalled when the store owner told me that they were forced to put virtual PC on all their store Macs so they could run this new software. Can you believe that?!? A company devoted to selling Macs that only uses sales programs for windows!!! Sounds like they really care about Macintosh software.

 

[gbojim]

That is my main PC dev environment

There are 3 app developers at my company and our exclusive development environment for the Windows side of things is VB 6.0 under Win2k on VPC under OS X. All are using TiBook 800's with 512MB RAM running OS X 10.1.5.

Before going exclusively this way, we were using iMacs for Mac/UNIX development and PIII 600s running Win2k for Windows development. Regarding speed, the VB IDE is a wee bit slower under VPC, but not something you really notice. The main thing in this environment is we have half the systems to maintain and it is amazingly stable. Plus - if Interdev takes down Windows, you are rebooted in about 10 seconds. It rocks.

Our Windows development is generally desktop apps. A couple of people mentioned RealBasic. If you are not doing desktop apps that connect to a local database, RB is a really good way to go. You can compile for Windows no problem and it is really nice because there is a single .exe file for the distribution (excluding data and control files). If you need to tie into Access though, stick with VB - the RB database APIs are not there yet.

Can't comment on VB for .net. We're not doing anything with that.