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Virtual P.C.

macbaseball

macbaseball

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 27, 2005
987
0
Northern California
I've never considered Virtual P.C., but my Dad and I were at the Apple Store the other day (Picking up Tiger), and we had time to wait. We were looking at this wall of software, and we started looking at Virtual P.C.


He started working on Mac in the early 1990s, and has always loved them. He has to use a P.C. for work and complains about it a lot. I tell him that he should switch to a Mac, but then he says he can't run the applications he needs.

He has to be able to run Microsoft Outlook and the accompanying calendar program, and also he has to be able to log in via VPN. My question is how reliable is Virtual P.C.. Is it a resource hog. Also, lets say your in the Virtual P.C. in Outlook, and someone sends you an Powerpoint, Can you open it with Mac Powerpoint, or do you have to use a window version. Could someone share their experiences.

Thanks in advance.
 
Its not too bad if you got a fast processor. On mine, its unbearable. Its like running on a 66 MHz Pentium. Even the Dual 2.7 G5 feels like its only about 600 MHz. Microsoft needs to work on the performance, and native card support. The S3 Trio? Thats part of the problem.
 
macbaseball said:
I've never considered Virtual P.C., but my Dad and I were at the Apple Store the other day (Picking up Tiger), and we had time to wait. We were looking at this wall of software, and we started looking at Virtual P.C.


He started working on Mac in the early 1990s, and has always loved them. He has to use a P.C. for work and complains about it a lot. I tell him that he should switch to a Mac, but then he says he can't run the applications he needs.

He has to be able to run Microsoft Outlook and the accompanying calendar program, and also he has to be able to log in via VPN. My question is how reliable is Virtual P.C.. Is it a resource hog. Also, lets say your in the Virtual P.C. in Outlook, and someone sends you an Powerpoint, Can you open it with Mac Powerpoint, or do you have to use a window version. Could someone share their experiences.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
As long as you don't expect to run multimedia or graphics intense apps, including games, it's fine. I've run it on my TiBook 1 GHz for a Windows-only program I need to use for work, and it does the job. Is it fast? No. Is it usable? Yes. For something like Outlook on a new PB, you would find it perfectly adequate. However, don't run XP, if you can help it; Win2k or even Win98SE are much faster. You can improve XP performance by a bunch of tweaking, but why? If you have a license for WindowsWhatever, just get the vanilla VPC, sans Windows, and install your own copy.

HTH
 
daveL said:
However, don't run XP, if you can help it; Win2k or even Win98SE are much faster. You can improve XP performance by a bunch of tweaking, but why? If you have a license for WindowsWhatever, just get the vanilla VPC, sans Windows, and install your own copy.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That's what I was thinking because it's what my Dad currently uses, and I tried XP at school and it felt sluggish (Probably due to a lack of RAM). I don't have a license, but my Dad's employer will install whatever he wants. (They have tons of licenses of both 2000 and XP).
 
I use VPC for Microsoft Project and Visio. It is slow on my 1.3MHz PB, but tolerable. I haven't used it for logging in via a VPN. Otherwise it is quite reliable - in some ways it is more reliable than Windows on an Intel/AMD box. However there are some limitations (particularly relating to sound, graphics, and comms) because of the way that Microsoft emulates the PC environment. There are some threads on this site, and Microsoft has a fairly good knowledge base.

Files from Win Powerpoint will open under Mac Powerpoint with very few problems (I do this everyday). The only limitations I have noticed are that fonts do not always open the same (the typeface or size might change), bullets sometimes change, and Windows graphics sometimes appear a little different. But after a little time I found these limitations quite acceptable and easy to handle - they are less noticeable, for example, than some of the inconsistencies between various versions of Windows Powerpoint (say, between Office 2000 and Office 2003) - and I get the pleasure of working on the Mac while my colleagues and clients struggle along on Windows.
 
macbaseball said:
Thanks. That's what I was thinking because it's what my Dad currently uses, and I tried XP at school and it felt sluggish (Probably due to a lack of RAM). I don't have a license, but my Dad's employer will install whatever he wants. (They have tons of licenses of both 2000 and XP).
Click to expand...
I do have 1 GB of memory and config VPC to use 384 MB (Win2k, stripped).

Edit: I meant to add you should try your best to do the VPN with a native OSX client.
 
Virtual PC

I purchased VPC7 with Office because I work in a Windows environment and need to run a few Win specific apps. I have gotten away from using VPC and use Remote Desktop Client now. I have setup and use VPN remotely with no problems both using VPC and also native OSX (Panther).
Also, use Entrourage to connect to the MS Exchange server with no problems. VPC is slow, but if you don't have to use it very often, as someone else mentioned, it is bearable. However, I have noticed the PB (1.5) does heat up more when using VPC.
 
wow i was wondering about this to... I wanted to play some games on it using this, like Unreal 2004 have it now but for PC only... So how slow does it run? I would be getting a Powerbook in my Signature or a ibook with a 1.33... Would put another 512mb in it right off...
 
You can go ahead and drop the idea of playing games inside VPC. Not going to work - extra ram or not.
 
BKKloppenborg said:
wow i was wondering about this to... I wanted to play some games on it using this, like Unreal 2004 have it now but for PC only... So how slow does it run? I would be getting a Powerbook in my Signature or a ibook with a 1.33... Would put another 512mb in it right off...
Click to expand...
Why don't you try reading the thread for your answer. It was addressed in the third post. I know a thread with 7 or 8 posts can be a bit taxing, but really.
 
daveL said:
Why don't you try reading the thread for your answer. It was addressed in the third post. I know a thread with 7 or 8 posts can be a bit taxing, but really.
Click to expand...

damn i have been doing so much resurch on Macs its driving my mom crazy... lol :D
 
The other option is to use the mac in native mode for everything. The new mail client in OS X 10.4 works great with Exchange. And with a middleware product (groupcal) you can automatically sync your ical calendar with the exchange calendar. There are also a few VPN clients that work well in native mac mode.

I do all of these in an otherwise Windows world and no one knows the difference. The only time I have to fire up VPC is to run Microsoft Project or Visio.
 
GrumpyJabber said:
The other option is to use the mac in native mode for everything. The new mail client in OS X 10.4 works great with Exchange. And with a middleware product (groupcal) you can automatically sync your ical calendar with the exchange calendar. There are also a few VPN clients that work well in native mac mode.

I do all of these in an otherwise Windows world and no one knows the difference. The only time I have to fire up VPC is to run Microsoft Project or Visio.
Click to expand...

He has to use Outlook and the Calendar program with that. The problem is that people can't make requests for meetings from Outlook to iCal.
 
I ran it for a few months as a part of some research I was doing. The objective of the research, as a part of the technology council's goal: to see if we can run all of our engineering software (Autodesk apps; Visio; Visual Studio; etc.) on a Mac. We hated the idea of using VPC, but it was necessary for those applications listed above.

Most of the people doing the tests were on 1.5GHz PBs, but I had a 1GHz PB. And Oh My God, it was slow. Autodesk Inventor Release 9 took forever to start up (as it already does in Windows). However, I was surprised at the real-time panning and moving you could still accomplish once the program was up-and-running. Surprised not that it was a stellar show, but surprised that it wasn't totally bogged down. The rest of the previously mentioned apps ran well enough, but were very slow to start up.

I installed some of my own software on it just to test out the results. I put the Macromedia Studio suite on it. DreamWeaver ran moderately well, actually, and didn't suffer tremendous lag (at least no more lag than I could already attribute to my FTP remote syncing). But it was still slow.

Overall, VPC is not made for intense use, but rather as a substitute if you simply must have both operating systems available. I would suggest, though, to pay close attention to the settings that it runs under. Particularly RAM and hard drive allocation; the default setting that VPC took for hard drive space was 15%. And 15% of a hard drive is quite a bit if you only plan to use VPC for a few, meager tasks like Outlook or Project.
 
Does Outlook use the Exchange servers or is it something else ... So basically if it does, my Dad has no need for Outlook or Virual P.C., so all I would have to do is buy another copy of Office. (I already used up the three licences in my existing Office bundle.)
 
macbaseball said:
Does Outlook use the Exchange servers or is it something else ... So basically if it does, my Dad has no need for Outlook or Virual P.C., so all I would have to do is buy another copy of Office. (I already used up the three licences in my existing Office bundle.)
Click to expand...

Most corporations that use Outlook are driven by Exchange Server. Thats a question he can ask his IT department.
 
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