I need advice on Virtual PC

otaviano

Hi all,



I'm gonna buy an iBook 800 with 640 Mbytes next week and apart from the OSX, I'd like to use a Cisco Router simulator ( that only runs on Windows ), some other minor Windows softwares and Red Hat Linux for some specific studies.



My question is: should I install Virtual PC over OSX, or create two partitions for both OS9 and OSX and then, install Virtual PC on OS9 ?



In this second case, OS9 would be used just for the emulator.



What would you recommend me ?



( the reason for my question is because I've heard that at least meanwhile Virtual PC on OSX is not doing well so maybe its use on OS9 would be nicer for my objective since I don't intend to run heavy applications, but as I said, just some light softwares )





Thanks in advance for any help.





[ 11-22-2002: Message edited by: Otaviano ]



[ 11-23-2002: Message edited by: Otaviano ]</p>

rick1138

I have Virtual PC 3.0 running WIndows 2000 on OS 9 and it is total crap-almost useless.I would like to know how it runs with Linux if anyone has experience with it.

spart

Rick, it would do you a bit of good to mention your setup. Problem could be you're trying to emulate a 1GHz PIII on a 400MHz G3.



Other problem is that you are running an outdated version of VPC. I'm sure Otaviano isn't going to be buying 3.0 for his iBook.

torifile

For your needs and system, I'd recommend exactly what you're suggesting. VPC on my powerbook g4 is really slow, and it was unusable on my iBook. You don't necessarily HAVE to have different partitions, but I like to have different ones for various purposes (such as testing out new builds of OS X when they come out). If you must use VPC, you've got the right idea. BTW, I've heard that win2000 runs best out of all the windows os's. win98 is crap (what I'm running) and XP is slow as a dog from what I hear.

rick1138

Actually I have a G4.My version of Virtual PC is outdated,but it wasn't when I bought it.There is a reason I haven't upgraded-VIrtual PC sucks.

ming

How much slower are Win 2000 and XP compared to Win95? Because I use VPC 3.0 with Win95 on a Powermac 6500 275Mhz 603e 96MB Ram and it runs really fast, with just about no interface lag. It even seems to be using the ATI Rage IIC card to drive the Windows screen. I'm really impressed with it. I think a 1 Ghz G4 would be much faster, even if Win2000 does take 2-4 times the processor power.

barto

Two partitions arn't necessary, I never encountered any speed difference in Classic mode partitioned vs non-partitioned.



Virtual PC is faster on 9, but not unbearably slower on X like some other programs *cough*tropico*cough*.



Some of the speed decrease is due to VPC "cheating" in 9. When a Mac OS 9 application is in the forground, it chooses what other applications get CPU time. VPC naturally hogs all the CPU time.



In Mac OS X, it can hog most of the CPU, but the OS makes sure other applications get CPU time.



Future versions of VPC should run faster in X than 9, and VPC 5.0.4 is a huge improvment over 5.0.1-3



I'm running Windows XP in Mac OS X, and it's a tad slower than Windows 98 SE. Just make sure to turn all the fancy graphics and sound options off.



The increase in stability in XP more than makes up for the speed decrease though.



Barto

rick1138

VPC with Win95 is much faster than 3.0 with 2000,which in my opinion never should have been released.

cowerd

[quote]VPC with Win95 is much faster than 3.0 with 2000,which in my opinion never should have been released.<hr></blockquote>

You more than make up the time by not rebooting every five minutes when Win95 crashes or a program locks up.



VPC5.0.4 seems to run much better than revious iterations of VPC5. I run VPC w/ Win2K for ACAD work on a DP1GHZ and a TiBook and it seems just fine. ACAD is a heavy graphics load and there is just a little lag. For web browsing (fsking IE6 only pages) there's plenty of speed. The biggest issue is the laptops HD and slow disk access.



[ 11-23-2002: Message edited by: cowerd ]</p>

torifile

[quote]Originally posted by Barto:

<strong>Two partitions arn't necessary, I never encountered any speed difference in Classic mode partitioned vs non-partitioned.

</strong><hr></blockquote>



While I agree that two partitions aren't necessary for VPC, I'm a fan of having 2 partitions in general. It has a lot of benefit and not many drawbacks. Just a personal preference and it has nothing at all to do with speeding up VPC.

rick1138

[quote]You more than make up the time by not rebooting every five minutes when Win95 crashes or a program locks up.



VPC5.0.4 seems to run much better than revious iterations of VPC5. I run VPC w/ Win2K for ACAD work on a DP1GHZ and a TiBook and it seems just fine. ACAD is a heavy graphics load and there is just a little lag. For web browsing (fsking IE6 only pages) there's plenty of speed. The biggest issue is the laptops HD and slow disk access.<hr></blockquote>





With 3.0 the speed was awful,almost unusable-sometimes a minute or two lag for some actions-completely unnacceptable.The reason for the speed problem was that Windows2000 was contained in too small a memory space-it wasn't possible to increase it-it was a fundamental problem with the way the app was designed.It never shoul have been released.

aquatic

You people must be spoiled. I've learned patience on an iBook 500 with OS X 10.1.4! I am running Windows XP (I just got VPC today!) I turned off all the GUI crap and am downloading SP 1 right now. It is slow but VERY acceptable, if you are PATIENT. It works.



What I've always wondered: WHY doesn't VPC use your graphics card!?!! The BIGGEST market would be for game compatability. I can't tell you how many people came in to this Mac shop I worked for, with their little kids, asking about VPC and PC games. I had to tell them "forget about it." Oh well, Connectix, I guess you don't want all that money? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />

rick1138

This isn't about patience at all-patience is using OS X Public Beta on a 300 mhz iBook.I would liken the performance of VPC 3.0 with 2000 on a 500 Mhz G4 to using a 50 mhz Pentium machine,maybe slower-it's that bad.As I said before,the app is almost unusable.



[ 11-24-2002: Message edited by: Rick1138 ]</p>

rick1138

Emulation introduces timing errors which make VPC unusable for some purposes

ming

I just don't see how VPC can be so slow on high end G4's (compared to my 275Mhz 603). yes, I run Win95, but it's really fast, and Windows 2000 can't be that much slower can it?

ibrowse

From my experiences, installing Linux on VPC can be a real pain. I had a horrible time installing it, nothing seemed to work right, it kept resetting my resolution to odd sizes that were huge but way too wide etc. But another time everything went fine, so I guess you either have to be really careful or lucky. I found it much easier to create another partition and install a PPC Linux on that.

not unlike myself

My advice? Don't use it! It's not worth it.

ibrowse

Honestly, the most productive thing I've ever needed (or been able to) to use it for was to check alignment (and stuff like that) on websites I was building. I often found that between Netscape for Windows, IE for Windows, and Chimera, IE, OmniWeb, Mozilla, and Netscape for Mac, I usually got at least 4 different results.



After you have it for a while, you realize that there are alternatives for almost everything you needed VPC that are much easier. Well, that's me anyway.

torifile

Well, if you must use VPC, definitely get windows 2000. I've been muddling along with win98 for years in VPC and I finally made the plunge and got 2000. It's like night and day, really. It's actually USABLE now. <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> I could hardly believe it.

piwozniak

Hi



i use it on PB 667DVI for crystal reports, Lotus Designer, and bunch of other things, it's OK.



Don't expect too much, but for simple winblows apps it works.



L8tr