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Virtual PC question / Property Management

agentmouthwash

agentmouthwash

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 15, 2003
231
0
Hi, I work at a Property Management company and we use Mac Mini G4s, but need to update the software that we use.

There are a lot of companies that offer Property Management software that is web-based - here is the problem, you Need to use the PC version of Internet Explorer. Firefox, Mozilla & Safari won't work.

I don't want to give up my macs for pcs. I've been an Apple user since 1983 with my APPLE IIe. I'm thinking about buying VIRTUAL PC for my macs just for INTENET EXPLORER. Ok here are my questions:

How fast a boot time does VIRTUAL PC have? Is it hard to set up? How does it run on Mac Mini's with 512mb of Ram?

Thanks for your time!
 
It boots just about as quickly as a Windows-based PC would. It's not hard to set up, but you are going to need to upgrade your Mac mini to 1 GB of RAM (the maximum). Trying to run Virtual PC with Windows (XP, I assume) in 512 MB of RAM is going to be painful.

One nice thing about Virtual PC is that you can "freeze" a Windows session and resume it anytime you like. (It's like the Windows "Hibernate" feature.)

And of course, you will need to buy both Virtual PC and a copy of Windows XP or Windows 2000 (or the bundled version that has both in the same box).
 
yea i was thinking once i upgrade the cpu in this and put as much ram in this as i can i think 700+mb ram since its a rev b or ver 2 what ever u call it in mac terms. once i upgreade it once i am done it will have a 80 gig hdd a sonnet g4 1000 mhz with a ati radion 9200 pci video i just want to run virtual pc with windows 98. right now this is the only mac i got look below once its all upgraded it should last for a bit. i wonder how good virtual pc would run once i upgrade all the way
 
clayj said:
One nice thing about Virtual PC is that you can "freeze" a Windows session and resume it anytime you like. (It's like the Windows "Hibernate" feature.)
Click to expand...
...except it actually works. Seriously, it seems like half the time I "hibernate" Windows it freezes on wake. The VPC "hibernate" works fine, though.

And yes, VPC will do what you want here--I use it for pretty much the same reason, except in my case it's to test sites I'm building on the disaster of a browser that is IEWin. You do want to load up on as much RAM as possible, though (besides, OSX will run better that way, too).

If you do start it up and shut it down instead of saving the state, I wouldn't say boot times are quit as quick as a real PC, but they're not bad--on my (admittedly beefy) Mac W2K takes less than 30 seconds to start. The fact that it doesn't have to initialize the hardware or check the RAM does cut off a chunk of time to help compensate for the slower startup.

Otherwise, VPC will be slow on a Mac Mini, but since all you're doing is IE I doubt it'll be a problem at all.

One alternative (and this will depend on your office setup and a number of other things) is to set up a cheap physical PC with VNC or Microsoft's RDC turned on; you can then remotely connect to the Windows box from a Mac and run things on it at full speed. If you're supporting a lot of Macs on a network, this might actually be cheaper: get a Windows server and enable RDC connections, so you can run several different users off one moderately-priced server simultaneously. Could be cheaper (and faster) than a bunch of copies of IE.
 
I thank you all for responding. it would be cheaper and easier I guess to just buy PCs, but we already have loads of software on the macs that we currenty use - like MSOFFICE & Filemaker pro 7. I'm a mac person and it would dive me crazy to replace all our macs with PCs & I'm not about to give each person 2 computers (1 mac / 1 pc) that would be too confusing. So what is the difference between Windows 2000 Business and XP? I don't even know which package I should buy. Would i be able to just buy a bunch of VPC with no OS and buy 1 copy of Windows and use that on every machine?
 
agentmouthwash said:
I thank you all for responding. it would be cheaper and easier I guess to just buy PCs, but we already have loads of software on the macs that we currenty use - like MSOFFICE & Filemaker pro 7. I'm a mac person and it would dive me crazy to replace all our macs with PCs & I'm not about to give each person 2 computers (1 mac / 1 pc) that would be too confusing. So what is the difference between Windows 2000 Business and XP? I don't even know which package I should buy. Would i be able to just buy a bunch of VPC with no OS and buy 1 copy of Windows and use that on every machine?
Click to expand...
No, you need a copy of Windows for every machine. Windows now uses product activation which would preclude its potential use on multiple machines.

Windows XP Home would suffice for your purposes. XP Pro and Windows 2000 are more expensive and wouldn't work any better for what you need Windows for.

You can get Virtual PC bundled with Windows XP Home... you'd probably save some money that way. But you're also going to need to upgrade your Mac's RAM to 1 GB, at a minimum. (That's the maximum for the Mac mini, BTW.)
 
Ok cool. Thank you all for your help, I really appreciate it. So more RAM and VPC xp home edition. That should work!
 
MS doesn't even check the registration codes anymore, so far as I KNOW

GODDAMN THIS KEYBOARD. I CAN'T CHANge it out of caps lock sometimes :-( Need a new keyboard.
 
kalisphoenix said:
MS doesn't even check the registration codes anymore, so far as I KNOW

GODDAMN THIS KEYBOARD. I CAN'T CHANge it out of caps lock sometimes :-( Need a new keyboard.
Click to expand...
Obviously you haven't installed a non-OEM copy of Windows in, say, the past 4 years. Windows and Office for Windows both use activation now.
 
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