Switch: VirtualPC

[yarngrrl]

Apologies if this is a dumb or already asked and answered question but....

I'm finally going to bite the bullet and switch to a Mac (as soon as they announce the new iMac upgrades ) after many frustrating years as a Windows user. However, I do have a few applications that will require getting VirtualPC (yes, they are necessary programs that don't have Mac versions). My question is about licenses. If I already have a license for my existing purchased version of W2K, can I just transfer that license? What about older versions of windows ? Would I need separate versions of VPC?

 

[amac4me]

Apologies if this is a dumb or already asked and answered question but....

I'm finally going to bite the bullet and switch to a Mac (as soon as they announce the new iMac upgrades ) after many frustrating years as a Windows user. However, I do have a few applications that will require getting VirtualPC (yes, they are necessary programs that don't have Mac versions). My question is about licenses. If I already have a license for my existing purchased version of W2K, can I just transfer that license? What about older versions of windows ? Would I need separate versions of VPC?

You need to get Virtual PC 7 for use with your new Mac. You won't be able to run the Windows based versions of Office on your Mac, you'll need to purchase "Office 2004 for Mac". I would recommend that you purchase the Professional version of Office 2004 that comes bundled with VPC 7. In regards to your question about licensces, I'm not sure about that.

Note that Microsoft issued a statement a couple of weeks ago regarding Office and VPC on Tiger. They indicated that a patch would probably be released within a few months of Tiger's release for any bugs/workarounds.

You may be interested in my website which is listed under my signature in this post.

Regards and Welcome to the Mac!

 

[wordmunger]

You can buy VPC without a copy of Windows and then install a legally licensed copy of windows on VPC. However, I think MS requires that you register your copy of Windows, so if it's already licensed for you to use on your PC, you may be out of luck. If you sell the PC, aren't you selling your Windows license with it?

If you can somehow uninstall windows from the PC (maybe install Red Hat on it?) then you could install it on your Mac. I doubt you could do this with a pre-installed version of Windows, though -- only the standalone boxed software.

 

[daveL]

You need to get Virtual PC 7 for use with your new Mac. You won't be able to run the Windows based versions of Office on your Mac, you'll need to purchase "Office 2004 for Mac". I would recommend that you purchase the Professional version of Office 2004 that comes bundled with VPC 7. In regards to your question about licensces, I'm not sure about that.

Note that Microsoft issued a statement a couple of weeks ago regarding Office and VPC on Tiger. They indicated that a patch would probably be released within a few months of Tiger's release for any bugs/workarounds.

You may be interested in my website which is listed under my signature in this post.

Regards and Welcome to the Mac!

Uhmm ... What are you saying? Any Windows version of Office will run fine under VPC 7; I have run Office numerous times with VPC. There's no need to buy Office 2004 for Mac, unless you want the OS X integration, which is understandable. Also, there's NO reason for the OP to buy anything but the "no Windows" basic version of VPC 7 (~ $100) if he/she already has a Win2K license.

yarngrrl: If you have *any* version of Windows, you can run it under the basic, no Windows included, veriosn of VPC 7. From experience, Win2K with as many services disabled as you can, will give you the best performance. XP, unless you spend a ton of time tweaking it, will run a good bit slower than Win2K. As I said, you can run any version of Office for Windows in your VPC environment.

Reports suggest that VPC 7 is running under Tiger with the exception of some of the more advanced network integration options (virtual switch). Even this glitch will likely be fixed by the time to get up and running. The default VPC networking, shared network, supposedly works with Tiger, although I have not personally tried it, yet.

 

[daveL]

You can buy VPC without a copy of Windows and then install a legally licensed copy of windows on VPC. However, I think MS requires that you register your copy of Windows, so if it's already licensed for you to use on your PC, you may be out of luck. If you sell the PC, aren't you selling your Windows license with it?

I've installed Win2K on both VPC 6 and VPC 7 on several iterations of Macs without any registration issues. XP, of course, is different, but the OP has a Win2K license.

 

[amac4me]

Uhmm ... What are you saying? Any Windows version of Office will run fine under VPC 7; I have run Office numerous times with VPC. There's no need to buy Office 2004 for Mac, unless you want the OS X integration, which is understandable. Also, there's NO reason for the OP to buy anything but the "no Windows" basic version of VPC 7 (~ $100) if he/she already has a Win2K license..

Oh ... I didn't know that. I was only stating what I heard ... I guess I should take that with several grains of salt considering that's what the people at Comp USA told me! I've only been a Mac user since last September and have never installed Office 2004 for Mac or VPC. My apologies if I was wrong! At least I learned something today!