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Vanilla said:
forget games, if this means I can run PC specific Business applications (e.g. Actinic e-commerce software, Microsoft Project etc.) effectively on a G4 PowerBook, without the sensation of wading through treacle I will be overjoyed and will look forward to a ritual demolition of my remaining PC Desktop.

Yes, and maybe one will be able to run QuickBooks in mixed platform, multi-user (ie, PC) environments at better than 10% speed - which coincidentally seems to be about the speed Intuit is moving to integrate the PC and MAC worlds...... :eek:
 
JohnGalt said:
Yes, and maybe one will be able to run QuickBooks in mixed platform, multi-user (ie, PC) environments at better than 10% speed - which coincidentally seems to be about the speed Intuit is moving to integrate the PC and MAC worlds...... :eek:

Boy do I hear you! The only thing keeping me from being 100% Mac is that there is not a version of Quicken and/or Microsoft Money with full cross platform file compatibility. And running the Windows versions of Quicken and Money on VPC 6 is slower than the time it takes for paint to dry...
 
Phatpat said:
i'll believe it when I see it. We've had bad experiences with claims of "native video card support" in the past...

The diff being that:

1. The people claiming this didn't have 5 BILLION in the bank.
2. The people who claimed this may have not had intentions beyond the Mac platform. Keep in mind if they can get the architecture of this to work they may be able to easily allow people running POWER5 CPU's to run some flavor of Windows Server with VPC. MS could have designs on trying to expand the platform of Windows beyond x86.
3. Last I heard rumor was that some "form" of VPC was going to ship with Longhorn to allow full backwards compat with previous versions of Windows.

For once I have to have a little faith in MS. I think the greed factor at this point will outweigh the screw-apple-over factor. Esp when you consider that Apple is at what?! 2% of the market right now?
 
Now I can finally play my old copies of Space Quest and Kings Quest! Woo-hoo!
 
I for one am looking forward to this release. This should keep me from buying a PeeCee for testing apps/sites for a few more years.

To be honest, I'm more than a little surprised that M$ is actually putting effort into this.

And to address the "why bother emulating windows on windows" issue:

- as a developer working for a company who creates learning resuorces, I use VPC daily to test the web delivered projects on various OS/Browser combinations without booting into an new OS (disrupting development workflow), or rolling over to 4+ different workstations. This allows us to control our QA costs, while providing the broadest range of testing possible.

Relevant, invaluable, necessary and a welcomed tool.

Incidentally: is it possible to emulate the Mac OS (X) on Windows? :p
 
Many of the comments on this say good for games. It just made me realize how much many of us don't think of windows as anything really valuable but for playing games not ported to the Mac, kind of sad in a way.

I am hoping for a tremendous speed increase and not just a noticable one. Even mundane tasks seem so slow when switching from a Dual G5 to an emulated PC on a G4.
 
Excellent observation.

I for one am looking forward to doing all my graphics work in Photoshop CS emulated on Windows ME through VPC.

:D
 
qubex said:
That link goes to a site offering a Mac OS/PowerPC emulator for Windows. It's in the earliest stages of development (pre-beta; maybe even pre-alpha) and is by no means ready for regular use or to be included as part of a package. It DOES prove that PowerPC emulation on x86 hardware is possible, just not perfected yet.
 
Codemonkey said:
Excellent observation.

I for one am looking forward to doing all my graphics work in Photoshop CS emulated on Windows ME through VPC.

:D
Why on earth would you want to use Windows ME, of all versions of Windows available? Windows ME is hated by reviewers everywhere, as well as by numerous Windows users that tried it. I skipped it (back when I had a PC in addition to a Mac) because of the horror stories I read about it (I went straight from Windows 98SE to Windows XP Home). Is there some feature of WinME that compels you to use it instead of Win2K or WinXP?
 
SiliconAddict said:
Screw games! If the system can offload some of the load onto the GPU instead of the CPU maybe I can run some of the more business oriented apps on a Mac. Love hate or despise Microsoft this is REALLY good news,

Thats what I am hoping as well ! I still would like to run Microsoft Project on my Mac. There is noting compatible on the Mac site.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Why on earth would you want to use Windows ME, of all versions of Windows available? Windows ME is hated by reviewers everywhere, as well as numerous Windows users that tried it. I skipped it (back when I had a PC in addition to a Mac) because of the horror stories I read about it (I went straight from Windows 98SE to Windows XP Home). Is there some feature of WinME that compels you to use it instead of Win2K or WinXP?

You are right. ME is buggy. Have seldom seen a Windows crashing that often. Better use 98 or 2000 if not XP. But I would expect that 98 runs faster. And still most games run on 98.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Why on earth would you want to use Windows ME, of all versions of Windows available?[SNIP]

Are you braindead? I orignally stated that we use VPC for testing our apps on various browser/OS combinations.

I then made a sarcastic/snide/obviously rhetorical remark (hence the :D ) about running a bloated program on a crap OS EMULATED.

LOL

Ya, let me take that back: I WAS serious after all.

:p

Ta ta.
 
phampton81 said:
I know everyone hear scoffs at the idea of playing video games on the mac, especially through VPC, but this may make it possible to play a few not so new games on the mac that aren't ported already, I see this as good news.
Maybe games like Age of Mytholody or something along those lines. Not sure if you'd get perfromance out of any of the the first person shooters.
 
Codemonkey said:
Excellent observation.

I for one am looking forward to doing all my graphics work in Photoshop CS emulated on Windows ME through VPC.

:D


Dang it Codemonkey!! Warn people before you do that. I was in mid swallow of my Mello Yellow. I just about died!! :eek:

What are you some masochist or something?! ;) Windows ME.... *vomits profusely*
 
SiliconAddict said:
Dang it Codemonkey!! Warn people before you do that. I was in mid swallow of my Mello Yellow. I just about died!! :eek:

What are you some masochist or something?! ;) Windows ME.... *vomits profusely*

Glad someone else saw the humor in it.

Mello Yellow... *vomits profusely* :D
 
license explanation

SilentPanda said:
Why would it be illegal? I have VPC 5 (no sense in upgrading to 6 with version 7 coming out) and it came with Windows 2000 but I could install Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 98, DOS 6.1, whatever I want. You could buy VPC with or without the OS. Either way you can install whatever versions of Windows you own. But maybe I am misunderstanding you.

I think you are misunderstanding. It is not illegal to install other operating systems apart from what came with it. Quite the contrary. What is illegal is installing WindowsXP on one machine, taking out the disk and installing it on a second machine. Each copy of Windows can only be installed on one computer at a time. Installing the same copy on two computers violates the license agreement (coporate licenses are different). Office on the other hand has a desktop-and-a-portable license that lets you install it on two computers, provided one is a laptop.

-p
 
gopher said:
Its emulation is still quite limited. No altivec or 64 bit support.
It is workable. Primitive but rapidly evolving. There is no point emulating "advanced stuff" such as AltiVec because running it in emulation would actually be slower than running non-AltiVec implementations of the software itself. This is because the x86 platform, even with its MMX, SSE, SSE2 and 3DNow! instruction sets, is way behind the PowerPC AltiVec level. Sure, if there are AltiVec-only applications out there it will be impossible to make them run, and as such the option to "lie" about AltiVec support could be useful, but so far, so good.

Anybody who looks to emulation as a solution to their computing problems is in hock anyway. Emulation is only a last resort.
wrldwzrd89 said:
It DOES prove that PowerPC emulation on x86 hardware is possible, just not perfected yet.
Actually, the possibility of emulating PowerPC machines under x86 was never in any doubt. Alan Turing proved this fact in the early 1930s and indeed the very notion of emulation and the Universal Turing Machine is the foundation of the mathematical edifice upon which computation rests. One could, if one felt so inclined, emulate a Cray supercomputer on a Commodore-64 with a stack of punched cards. What this emulator proves is that it is possible to emulate a PowerPC machine under x86 and achieve a reasonable degree of performance.
 
Codemonkey said:
Are you braindead? I orignally stated that we use VPC for testing our apps on various browser/OS combinations.

I then made a sarcastic/snide/obviously rhetorical remark (hence the :D ) about running a bloated program on a crap OS EMULATED.

LOL

Ya, let me take that back: I WAS serious after all.

:p

Ta ta.
It's perfectly understandable that you would want to test things out on ME - your comment about looking forward to using ME was what surprised me. I have nothing against testing your web site/application - in fact, I do it myself :D (I'm a software developer, trying to decide if upgrading to a Select ADC membership is worth my while).
 
The important part about having it use your native videocard isn't so great for games as much as it is one less thing to have to emulate, so it can run faster overall. I've heard emulating the videocard was one of the most taxing things about VPC.
 
Codemonkey said:
To be honest, I'm more than a little surprised that M$ is actually putting effort into this.

I don't understand why people are amazed by this. M$ does not make the hardware that their OS runs on and actually sells the OS at a discount to the hardware manufacturers. With each copy of VPC sold they can charge a consumer the full price for their OS and expand the number of computers that their OS will run on.

The further development may actually doing more harm to Apple than discontinuing VPC. If VPC were discontinued there might be more incentive for people to port their applications to OSX rather than get into the "they can run it on VPC" mindset. Die hard Mac fans, like myself, will buy a Mac with or without VPC. Some people may buy a Mac with VPC and get frustrated by the performance or find that Windows offers programs to do what they want and the result may convert them over to Windows users rather than keeping them on Macs.

I will buy VPC once I finally save enough for my powerbook, (I will however buy the non OS version and use the substantial discount I get on MS software through my college to get the OS), but I will not be getting rid of my Windows PC. Now M$ has sold me 2 OSes (one for my PC, one for VPC) where if there were no VPC they only would have sold me one. There is $$ to be made and since I don't believe they think of OSX as a real threat (probably more of a benefit when the anti-monopoly lawsuits are running) they look at Macs as another market for their OS.
 
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