Laptop, VPC5, PC Anywhere?

farmerfarmer
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Recently did some work for the family business. I set up a network and installed a bunch of industry specific software. Basically, the family wants me to be a remote sys admin. I will be moving around for a while so they offered to buy a laptop and pay for a cell phone to accomplish this. Probably won't need to use it much but they seem pretty keen on me dealing with the problems. I think they got burned by past software companies and so-called computer technicians.



Here is the hard part. As usual all the special software they use is PC/Windows only. I wanted to be able to dial in using PC anywhere and remotely administer any problems. I know I probably need a PC laptop to make this work but I a Mac/aspiring Unix guy who would much prefer a free Mac laptop.



Would one of the Ti books running VPC5 with W2K and PC anywhere be usable in X. I have serious doubts. I have heard that VPC5 on X is dog slow and buggy. Is it possible to set up a partition for 9 and run VPC on nine? It is still pretty fast in 9 right? Any problems with PC anywhere being run in emulation and proper ip connections and what not?

Thanx in advance

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    I am using the latest version of VPC on a 550MHZ TI PB with no problems. I have Win98, Win 2k and Win XP installed. The speed is fine, I was playing pinball on XP just fine. I would recommend that you load up on RAM though. As for PCanywhere, which version you gunna use? I would give PCAnywhere express a try. It has an Active X control that you use in IE. I do wonder what type of bandwidth you will get with a cell phone though. The phones I've seen only give you a 14400 connection. <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" />
  • Reply 2 of 7
    farmerfarmer Posts: 7member
    The cell phone is primarily for talk support. The laptop is for situations when the phone fails. When I use the laptop I will be hooking up to a dail up account at the very least. This means I will need to find some sort of roaming ISP or a very detailed map of all the internet cafes in th US. (The whole situation is starting to sound bad!)



    Anyway, are you running VPC under X or 9? Also, I am a complete newbie with PC anywhere, could you elaborate on the express package and Active X control feature?

    Thanx in advance
  • Reply 3 of 7
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    I run VPC5 on a 466 G3 iBook OSX ... noticably slow, but bearable if you're not constantly booting apps ... i just use one or two and leave them running. (and thier not real graphics intense)



    I don't really know about PC anywhere, but I can't imagine it would be a problem ... VPC now just uses whatever connection you initiate in the mac environment.



    As for the ISP ... I am an airline pilot ... i travel all over the US, and Earthlink has a local dial-up number EVERYWHERE I've been.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    formerlurkerformerlurker Posts: 2,686member
    I have the same exact situation.



    Instead of VPC, I use Timbuktu Pro. Got two licenses - one for Mac version and one for PC version.



    Works great and costs less than VPC + PC Anywhere
  • Reply 5 of 7
    stimulistimuli Posts: 564member
    You might consider an old piece of trash like win 95 or 98. These old versions will run much faster and use less ram than win XP or similar.



    I used win 95 on a powerbook 233mhz and it ran faster than my Dad's 133mhz P.O.S. PC
  • Reply 6 of 7
    x704x704 Posts: 276member
    [quote]Originally posted by stimuli:

    <strong>You might consider an old piece of trash like win 95 or 98. These old versions will run much faster and use less ram than win XP or similar.



    I used win 95 on a powerbook 233mhz and it ran faster than my Dad's 133mhz P.O.S. PC</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Actually WIn 2000 is supposed to run quite well in VPC (so I've heard, I think Connectix did optimization for it or something). Additionally the latest VPC 5 update apparently significantly speeds up VPC 5 for OS X (apparently it's now close to OS 9 VPC speeds).
  • Reply 7 of 7
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    Both Win2k and XP run pretty fast for me on OSX. Win98 really sucks though.
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