Virtual PC/ MS Office on iBook question

[nat3503]

Hello there,

I'm buying one of the new iBooks in about 2 weeks time, and today I bought MS Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition and Virtual PC 7 with Windows XP Home. I planned on just buying a stock iBook and buying an external HD when I run out of space, but after reading that Virtual PC takes up 3 Gb of hard disk space, I'm wondering whether to upgrade to a bigger hard drive than just 40 Gb. Initially I didn't want to, as I've read on here many times that people have had trouble getting a problem fixed (e.g. dead pixels on the screen) if they BTO'd it.

So if any of you have Virtual PC 7 or MS Office 2004 running on an iBook, could you tell me whether it works fine or whether I should upgrade the HD rather than buy an external one at a later date?

Also, I heard that Virtual PC 7 has problems with Tiger, but I might not have an Internet connection for a few months when I first get the iBook so does anyone have any problems with Virtual PC and Tiger?

Thanks so much!

 

[fieldsofanfield]

In regards to the HDD space, I've heard you only actually get arounf 25GB of free space. The rest is taken up by the OS and bundled software. It's up to you whether you think that's enough space or not.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

It's quite easy: Get the biggest internal HD you can BTO. The iBook's HD is very expensive/hard to upgrade later and the bigger the HD the longer the iBook will last you. (It looks like RAM and battery are the only user serviceable items on the new iBooks)

I got the 60 GB when buying my iBook G4@800 more than a year and a half ago and ran out of space a long time ago, check out these advice on HD space and Tiger

 

[MacHarne]

Did you buy Office for Mac or the Windows version?

VPC allocates a certain amount of hard drive space. I've had a rough time of getting it to cooperate in terms of how much it saves for itself. On my old 15"PB with a 60GB hard drive, it claimed 10GB as its own.

As others have mentioned, I suggest getting the largest hard drive you can afford. Running out of space is the last thing you ever want to do.

 

[Over Achiever]

VPC has a mode where it takes up as much HD space as it needs ... I didn't run a lot on my Windows 2000 ... minimal install and drivers for my scanner and a few random applications. Overall the space VPC took on my computer was only 2-3 GB, not bad at all. Your mileage will vary.

As for VPC and Tiger, it did have an issue with Virtual Switching and connecting to the internet via your computer's internet connection, but that was sporadic for me, and should be resolved in their latest update for VPC.

 

[dcv]

I have Virtual PC on my PowerBook - it is pretty slow and extremely resource intensive. It has also caused a couple of kernel panics on my mac. I can't imagine how it will run on an iBook... if you must get an iBook instead of a PowerBook then definitely buy as much RAM as you can. As for hard disk space, if you can afford the little bit extra to upgrade to 60gb or more then do!

 

[Over Achiever]

I'd like to point out I'm running VPC on my powerbook which runs at 1 GHz ... the new iBooks are 1.42 - 1.5 GHz correct? It should work reasonably well, I have no complaints with it running on my PB. I don't think there's major difference ...

If you can add RAM then I would do that, it should help performance.