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Virtual PC 7 Now Shipping
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Depends on where you're getting these "specs" from. If you're looking at the Windows about box (first page of the system control panel), then it doesn't mean anything. That page doesn't actually run any benchmarks. It just returns the results of the CPUID instruction. That instruction could return "27GHz Pentium 4" or "60MHz 486" and that's what Windows will display. And that display won't have any bearing on actual performance.Freg3000 said:
In order to find out the performance of the emulated environment, you'll really need to run benchmark software of some kind.
It will emulate a processor class of some kind - P-III, P-4, etc.Abstract said:
The actual speed will depend on the speed of the Mac you run it on and what other programs the Mac is running at the time.
The speed reported by the emulator (or by the Windows about box, if it reports any speed) will be, at best, an estimate and, at worst, completely bogus.
The MHz Myth is not just for comparing Macs against PCs. It applies equally well when comparing any two chips of different architectures.Abstract said:
AMD's processors do more work per clock cycle, so they can do just as much as an Intel chip, while maintaining slower clock speeds. My Athlon-64 system runs at 2GHz, but has a "3200+" rating. In terms of real-world performance, it performs very much like a 3GHz P-4, despite having a clock that's 1/3 slower.
Of course, when dealing with apps that spend most of their time idle (like word processors) there are subjective measurements as well. I doubt a 650MHz Duron can actually do the work of a 2.2GHz P-4. Architecture changes can only gain you so much, and a 3.3x speedup is unlikely. But for typical users, you may never notice enough to care.
True enough.
I never said that you were being forced to do anything, that's your misinterpretation of what I said.
It doesn't sound to me like the "upgrade" is worth the money anyhow. It isn't coming with the useful features that would actually make a noticeable performance increase that were supposedly going to be included, like the native graphics support that was being touted. This is typical of MS, no real added value, much like the Office upgrades.
Wow. You've made some interesting assumptions based upon very little information. From my perspective, nobody seemed to have been "throwing a tantrum". I just stated some simple straighforward facts, while you appear to have assumed that I was saying something else. It seems to me that you are reading something more into what I posted than what I intended. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough for you.
shamino said:
I never said that you were being forced to do anything, that's your misinterpretation of what I said.
It doesn't sound to me like the "upgrade" is worth the money anyhow. It isn't coming with the useful features that would actually make a noticeable performance increase that were supposedly going to be included, like the native graphics support that was being touted. This is typical of MS, no real added value, much like the Office upgrades.
shamino said:
Wow. You've made some interesting assumptions based upon very little information. From my perspective, nobody seemed to have been "throwing a tantrum". I just stated some simple straighforward facts, while you appear to have assumed that I was saying something else. It seems to me that you are reading something more into what I posted than what I intended. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough for you.
d_p said:
If you purchase the Office 2004 then Virtual PC will be bundled together. VPC is due to be delivered in October, so don't expect to see it in stores until then. I pre-order Office 2004. Microsoft has already sent me just the Office 2004 Upgrade CD.
jjmaximum said:
Well, you're really talking about no less than $600 for a comparable PC speed-wise with WinXP Pro. But your point is still valid-- why get this when a PC is so relatively cheap?
For the most part, it's the integration between the Mac and PC environment, and the (eventual) ability to install and RUN multiple versions of a PC on the same machine. This is great for QA departments.
Frobozz said:
The reason I want VPC for gaming is because I have a laptop and when I travel, I'd like to have something to entertain me. Since I already have several PC games, I would like to play them on my PB when I travel.
JOD8FY
The thing that pisses me off is that people that bought VPC 6 to use on their G5's when VPC 7 was due out "any moment" have to spend another $100 on the upgrade for VPC 7. If they bought Office X at the same time, MS gave them Office 2004 for shipping & handling. No such deal with VPC. 
Frobozz said:
How about ease of use? not having to flip between two computers every time you want to run some different application, or if you have a particularly closed minded service that only supports a PC (online banking) because it's hard coded to look for IE for Windows...
BWhaler said:
I just want it to be here roughly the same time my new iMac is. Of course that'd be relying on Apple to ship this month too
Seriously though to close out the quarter you'd think Apple would be doing everything they can to ship as much as possible of non-iPod stuff to make sure they look viable for both brands
uocooper said:The thing that pisses me off is that people that bought VPC 6 to use on their G5's when VPC 7 was due out "any moment" have to spend another $100 on the upgrade for VPC 7. If they bought Office X at the same time, MS gave them Office 2004 for shipping & handling. No such deal with VPC.
If you purchase Office 2004 then VPC 7 is part of the package. It also applies to the upgrade purchase.
BWhaler said:
Its because the SUCKERS( I mean people), who just have to have it now, will fork out the extra $150 to get it. If they put the non bundled version out first Bill would make less money.
BWhaler said:
Where did you read that? That is kind of strange. I hope it comes out sooner...
JOD8FY
JOD8FY said:
Well, hope in one hand and $#!% in the other and see which one fills up first. M$ is going to cash in first and foremost on users who feel the NEED to upgrade and force them to take WinXP with it (it makes WinXP's overall sales figures look better, anyway). Next up they'll cash in on those who read the reviews of VPC7 and feel the NEED to upgrade and will force them to take Win2K. Anyone still left standing after that can get the no-OS version just so that M$ still gets their money.
Win '9x, etc.
I think you're either much more impatient than I am, or you haven't worked enough with the older OS's - if you're THAT worked up over Win '98!
For starters, I spent 6 years doing corporate PC support in an environment that consisted of Windows NT 3.51 initially, and migrated to NT 4.0 after the first year I was there.
In Windows NT, one wrong driver selection and the system would crash with an immediate blue screen of death - completely unrecoverable without reinstalling the WHOLE OS from SCRATCH! Furthermore, you didn't have much of any real "plug and play" capabilities, so even things that should have been "no brainers" like installing modems or network cards could turn into hours of guessing at I/O address, memory address and IRQ settings until it actually started working.
Win '98 may not be the most stable OS around, but changing the hardware around or initially installing it was MUCH easier than NT. Also, many of the issues Win '98 users had with it failing to shut down properly/completely were fixed by downloading the patches available on Microsoft's "Windows Update" site. Others were simply due to things like using a poorly written anti-virus product (McAfee and Norton both put out some real lousy verisons for Windows at various times - yet they were on MANY Win '9x machines as a standard rule).
Especailly with Windows '98 "second edition", Microsoft finally got a lot of things right with it. It was certainly better than Windows ME - which was supposed to be an upgrade to it.....
I think you're either much more impatient than I am, or you haven't worked enough with the older OS's - if you're THAT worked up over Win '98!
For starters, I spent 6 years doing corporate PC support in an environment that consisted of Windows NT 3.51 initially, and migrated to NT 4.0 after the first year I was there.
In Windows NT, one wrong driver selection and the system would crash with an immediate blue screen of death - completely unrecoverable without reinstalling the WHOLE OS from SCRATCH! Furthermore, you didn't have much of any real "plug and play" capabilities, so even things that should have been "no brainers" like installing modems or network cards could turn into hours of guessing at I/O address, memory address and IRQ settings until it actually started working.
Win '98 may not be the most stable OS around, but changing the hardware around or initially installing it was MUCH easier than NT. Also, many of the issues Win '98 users had with it failing to shut down properly/completely were fixed by downloading the patches available on Microsoft's "Windows Update" site. Others were simply due to things like using a poorly written anti-virus product (McAfee and Norton both put out some real lousy verisons for Windows at various times - yet they were on MANY Win '9x machines as a standard rule).
Especailly with Windows '98 "second edition", Microsoft finally got a lot of things right with it. It was certainly better than Windows ME - which was supposed to be an upgrade to it.....
SiliconAddict said:
Dang, I hope this won't be as bad as everyone has been saying in this thread! After all this waiting time I hope it works a lot better than VPC 6. Sucks about the graphics card support, or lack there of it I should say. I won't be purchasing it since I don't really have $250 to spend on software at the moment. I was considering getting it since I thought I'd need it for surviving the CS department, but I can just use the lab computers as a last resort. Besides, I've come this far without having to use any Windows software, so I might as well keep it that way.
"686" is shorthand for Intel's "Family 7" (as reported by CPUID). This includes the PPRO, P-II, P-III and P-4. Every 32-bit x86 chip after the Pentium is considered a "686" by this standard.Warlock7 said:
I can almost guarantee you it's not emulating a PPro - that chip has none of the SIMD or MMX instructions - features that a lot of modern Windows programs expect to find and won't work without.
kingtj said:
Some guy made his own "Service Pack" for Windose 98. Its unofficial, but I have to say that it is a nice benifit few one of my old computers. Service Pack for 98 SE
And don't get me started on win98 or ME. I only used the two AFTER dealing with Mac OS 8.1, and I felt lost, confused, and couldn't understand how they worked...I'll stop here...
And dealing with VPC and USB flash drives, all you need to do is click on the USB button at the bottom of the screen. If you read the USB information, it tells you that you need to enable USB devices manually because they are not shared, but keyboards, mice, and floppies are.
A question on this: Because the Bluetooth that is in my PowerBook is actually connected to the USB bus (check out the Apple System Profiler), what were to happen if I chose to add that to VPC?
And referring to the iPod/Bluetooth rumor earlier...have you ever tried sending something larger than 700kb over bluetooth? It sucks...A 3MB file, like an average song, would really take a looooooooooooooooooooong time.