Virtual PC 7 Now Shipping

[psxndc]

not likely going to work for you

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!!!

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.

 

[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]

I called it first!

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

 

[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!

 

[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]

Yeay!

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.