Virtual PC 6 Review

Connectix recently released version 6 of Virtual PC, the standard for emulating Windows on a Mac. With version 5, the main feature was Mac OS X compatibility. With version 6, the focus is on better performance and Mac integration. Now -- and this is the honest-to-goodness truth -- I have not seen an actual computer (only images on TV or in magazines) running native Windows in months. For the whole of 2003. I live a very good life. And I don't want to ruin it by running Windows on my Mac unless I have a need to.

My Windows needs are few. I am a perl developer; I work on perl and release perl software. Occasionally, I want to test on Windows. Further, I am a Slash developer, and sometimes our users complain about certain bugs that only show up on certain browsers, so I want to test that on Windows too. And every once in awhile, there is some software I need that is Windows-only.

All of these needs are rare, but when I need them, I need them. Virtual PC has always been helpful to me for these purposes in the past, though it's been slow. So on to version 6.

The first thing I did was upgrade from version 5, and just play around. Everything is noticeably faster. Viewing multimedia is nicer, opening apps is quicker, moving around the filesystem is zippier (I am running out of adjectives here, bear with me).

I was overdue on some updates, so I ran the Windows Update app. They downloaded and installed much more quickly, though I still prefer to download via Mac OS X and drag the files over to Windows.

I updated Cygwin and ActiveState's Perl Development Kit and Komodo, which I use occasionally; they work fine, but are still too slow to be bearable for everyday use, but I would not want to use Windows for everyday use, so it's all good.

Now, on to the new features. Version 6 has a more refined interface for defining preferences and organizing multiple guest PCs (I've got Windows 95 and Windows 2000). You can now mount those PC disk images, which is nice, but only when the PC is shut down. Since I leave the PCs running all the time, to make startup faster (using the Save State feature), I never have much opportunity to mount the disk images. Although, when I did try to mount the Windows 95 PC (more than once), it crashed. It worked fine for the Windows 2000 image.

Another new step toward integration is the addition of some items for the Mac OS X Dock: a Start menu application, and the ability to place Windows applications in the Dock. The Start menu application is nifty; you get the Start menu from your Windows PC, but in the Dock instead. It's more responsive and looks better. The Windows applications in the Dock seems slightly less useful; clicking on them does not bring the application to the front, it only launches it (which I'd just as soon do from the Start menu).

Supposedly, there are some significant improvements to printing, including automatically detecting USB printers. My USB printer, however, is connected via Mac OS X printer sharing on another Mac, and so I can't print to it directly from Windows (at least, not that I could figure out). Instead, I need to print through the host Mac OS X from the Windows OS. Sounds simple enough, right?

To do this, I still needed to use the right driver for the printer, and it wasn't included with Windows, so I needed to install it. I downloaded the drivers from Canon's web site with a Mac browser, and just copied them to the Windows desktop. When I ran the installer, Windows reported an "access violation". Thinking that perhaps the file was not downloaded properly, I tried downloading it via Windows instead. It takes longer, but maybe it will work. But no, I got the same error. It's good to know that Virtual PC maintains the Windows Experience, that these problems weren't Virtual PC's fault.

I pulled out the CD that came with the printer and installed the (somewhat out of date) drivers from there; this time, it worked fine. But then, when I tried to print, and the Virtual PC app hung on "Printing page number: 1", with a spinning pinwheel and an unmoving progress bar. Force Quit was my only way out. I tried several times, as I did with mounting the Windows 95 image, and each time, it hung. When I would start Virtual PC again, I'd get the Print dialog, and try to print again, and it would hang. At least it's consistent.

I finally decided to give up on printing this way, and did direct printing. I plugged my printer directly into the computer, told Virtual PC to use that USB device for Windows, and Windows detected it automatically and set it up for me. After that, printing worked fine.

But, in fairness, none of these problems are related to my normal uses of Virtual PC, and if I really needed to accomplish the tasks of printing or mounting I'd probably be able to figure it out. I just didn't care enough, so I dropped it and moved on to more interesting things.

I have a Kyocera QCP 3035 cell phone. I am going to be on the road some this summer, so I wanted to use it as a modem for my PowerBook G4/867. I got the cable and the Mac OS X modem drivers and scripts (I had to email tech support to get them), and it works fine as a modem, but I also wanted to use the cable to upload contacts and ringers. The problem is, the Kyocera software is Windows-only. Virtual PC to the rescue?

I installed the Windows drivers and software and plugged in the cable. It took me a couple tries to figure out that I needed to select the cable in Virtual PC's Serial Ports preferences (assigned it to COM1), but when I did, the software recognized the phone and everything just worked. I uploaded ringers, I controlled the phone with the software. So now for the contacts.

I converted my contacts from the Mac OS X Address Book vCard export to a CSV file the Kyocera software could read. I dragged the file from the Mac OS X desktop to the Windows desktop. I imported the file into the Kyocera software and synched it with the phone. It worked. There's not much else to say here, which is about the highest praise I could heap on the test.

I was also thinking about using some Windows software I have to control my motorized Meade telescope; but frankly, if I am going to be investing the time into getting the cable and setting it all up to use software like that, I'd rather spend the extra money to get the Mac version of the software. It'd be much better to use.

All in all, Virtual PC does what -- for me -- it should. I can run perl and various web browsers for testing; I can communicate with serial devices; I can even play Windows-only multimedia files.

For completeness, I was going to play around with Bochs, but after reading various reader reviews bemoaning poor performance, and not being able to find straightforward instructions, I gave up.

You may recall, gentle reader, that Microsoft has purchased Virtual PC from Connectix. Does that mean people should invest more into Bochs, or look for alternate solutions? Will Virtual PC mean the end of Office for Mac? I don't really know; but as I am not a Windows user, I don't really care, as long as I can keep using the very few Windows products I need.

Comments

lawsuit

[v_1_r_u_5]

I can forsee the day when software vendors join the likes of RIAA in endless lawsuits because people get around software copyright protection by 'sandboxing' installations on virtual pc.

Re:lawsuit

[binaryDigit]

when software vendors join the likes of RIAA in endless lawsuits

Software vendors already have the BSA to chase down evil doers.

people get around software copyright protection by 'sandboxing' installations on virtual pc.

I don't understand how using virtual pc helps people "get around" copyright protection? If it's an enduser app, then I doubt they care if you are silly enough to try to run two copies of Photoshop in two different VirtualPC sessions (ouch). The only scenerio I can see is if you're running something like IIS where it _may_ have language that says you can run one copy per cpu, so you run 5 copies in 5 virtual pc sessions to get around the CAL limits, but who'ed be insane enough to do this? I would imagine the bigger issue might be running this or VMWare and doing the above. But then again, the software licenses might already preclude this, so it may be a moot issue.

In any case, could you expand on what you had in mind here?

story branding

[MrLint]

Ya know it was kinda odd to see an 'apple' story with with bill gates borg head icon on it. i was confused for a moment:)

Re:story branding

[ackthpt]

Ya know it was kinda odd to see an 'apple' story with with bill gates borg head icon on it. i was confused for a moment:)

And the reply artwork is Apple theme, too (aqua? I dunno, don't have a mac)

I remember all the compatibility stuff crammed into the Amiga and you see how well that saved the platform (of course Commodore's marketing strategy was: Ready! Fire! Aim!) When I buy a computer, I expect it to behave like the system I bought it to be (with the occasional throwback emulators which still allow me to play Odyssey The Compleat Apventure and M.U.L.E...)

Re:story branding

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Ya know it was kinda odd to see an 'apple' story with with bill gates borg head icon on it. i was confused for a moment:)"

Man I wish TNG made a reference to 'detonating the core'. That'd be such a great quote here.

Re:story branding

[N3WBI3]

Really I was expecting to see more of that a few years ago ;)

Re:story branding

[tijnbraun]

What i think is quite odd is that Pudge uses Cygwin if he aready have Mac OS X... Why use an emulator to run an "almost" emulator to run a Unix shell?

Re:story branding

[coolgeek]

Oi! Green Flapper

Re:story branding

[prinzip]

"Les Français sont des singes de capitulation qui mangent du fromage." Excuse moi mais ca veut rien dire cette phrase!

Re:story branding

[Moofie]

Mais je pense que c'est tres amusant.

Network?

[eingram]

Maybe I missed it in the review, but is it possible to network the Virtual PC to the actual computer running it? You could do this in VMware and I found it useful time to time.

Re:Network?

[veddermatic]

Just give them different IP addresses... it works quite well.

Re:Network?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. You can set it up as NAT'd behind the system it's running on, or as a seperate IP address.

Re:Network?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. There are two main network setups. Shared IP, and Virtual Switch. Using Virtual Switch you can do this.

Re:Network?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be able to. You can do it in Virtual PC for Windows.

Re:Network?

[Dephex Twin]

Yes, but most people don't seem to know how to do it. Connectix supports using MS Loopback Adapter for the Windows version of Virtual PC, but for some reason doesn't have a Mac equivalent.

You can make your own by mapping some IP (say, 192.168.111.1) to 127.0.0.1. Just do this in the terminal:

sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 192.168.111.1

Then you add this to the ethernet port as well:

sudo ifconfig en0 alias 192.168.111.1

Now anytime VPC tries to get to that IP address, it will be like going to localhost.

Now if you just set the Windows side to a static IP like 192.168.111.2 with the gateway 192.168.111.1, the two machines can talk, even if you are not hooked up to any network.

Oh, and make sure you set the Windows side to "Virtual Switch" in VPC... the default is "Shared Networking".

(To get rid of those customizations, just execute this command: sudo ifconfig lo0 -alias 192.168.111.1, and then the same with with en0).

Re:Network?

[clifyt]

Shit, I do this all the time.

I run both Win2k and Redhat 8.0 on my Mac. I find it MUCH more efficient to grab my terminal and SSH into my 8.0 box than it is to pull the GUI up for the virtual RH box.

Of course, occasionally I'll use Remote Desktop on the Mac to pull up the Win screen (cause for some damn reason, resizing the screen sometimes screws it up...I haven't took the time to figure that out yet).

Dealing with the demo of the new 6.0, I've even noticed it has built in VNC if you wanted to admin the stuff that way...

It really is a slick application...I just need to get off my ass and upgrade before the demo runs out...

clif

Re:Network?

[irving47]

Yeah, I used to do this when Winnuke was still a problem. Nothing funnier (at the time) than launching Win95 in VPC and then using "Nuke'Em" to blue screen it. Hours of enjoyment!

Re:Network?

[jaysones]

It;s much easier just to map a location on your Mac drive to a drive letter in VPC. Faster, too.

Re:Network?

[JoshWurzel]

Why bother? With virtual PC 6, you can mount the VPC windows image in the same way that you mount external hard drives. Then you can use it the same way you would any other hard drive.

Or am I missing some advantage that networking offers over just plugging the thing in?

Re:Network?

[Anonymous Coward]

i can think of a few reasons, but the most obvious is the "geek" factor. :)

Re:Network?

[pudge]

Heh, that brings back memories. I even put a script on my home page that would attempt to nuke the Windows user that dared click on it, and posted screen shots of the blue-screened VPC.

Re:Network?

[Battal Boy]

Well, if you're building a site that has ASP and you want to test how it works/looks on a Mac, this local connection is quite handy. Say you have Win2K running IIS on VPC, you can test your site by connecting to IIS as if it was just another server on the Internet... Keen, innit? ;-)

Re:Network?

[xombo]

[Lisa:~] prestonursini% sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 192.168.111.1

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these two things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.

Password:

hmm, does that mean it is going todo somthing horrible??

Re:Network?

[Dephex Twin]

The short answer is no, it won't do anything horrible at all. The "sudo" at the beginning of the command means you want to execute the command with administrator priveleges, which is required if you want to add anything with ifconfig. "sudo" can be dangerous if you use it recklessly, because it lets you do things that would be off-limits to the normal user. Also, "Respect the privacy of others" refers to the fact that if you use the "sudo" command in a multi-user environment, you would have the privileges to access the data in anyone's home directory.

I don't know how to prove that this particular command is harmless, except to say that it wouldn't have been modded up on Slashdot if it was a troll that was meant to do damage.

Recently???

[veddermatic]

It came out about the same time as the ATi Radeon 9500... and we remember when you guys figured that one out =P

"News for nerds, horribly delayed puff pieces for products that have been out for months."

sigh.

Hmm

[Gortbusters.org]

For all the PHP developers, the good ole Zend Studio is available on Mac OSX. If only NuSphere's PHPed was.

Hmm, what else keeps me a windows box next to my linux box. Perhaps it's DAOC, management of my Clie. The MS office support in OSX is tempting though!

Re:Hmm

[jejones]

Following the NuSphere link shows "V3.1 now available/supports Linux."

Re:Hmm

[lewp]

Just replace them both with a Beowulf cluster running Emacs. Be sure to buy a bigger hard disk first, though :).

What I want to know

[FueledByRamen]

When are they going to re-add 3d acceleration for Virtual PC? I'd love to run Rhinoceros (a 3d CAD app) inside of VPC, but it runs poorly on an unaccelerated card. (I'd also love to run Battlefield 1942, but that will have to be relegated to my gaming x86 for now, as it requires somewhere around a 2ghz cpu for all of the physics and AI.) I remember that sometime in the past they had support for the 3dfx Voodoo 3 cards - where has that gone?

Re:What I want to know

[runenfool]

Connectix/Microsoft can't readd video card support because of endian issues.

The reason the early voodoo cards were supported is because they were 3d only. If another 3d only card came on the market it could be done.

Re:What I want to know

[FueledByRamen]

What I'm thinking (and this would take a performance hit, obviously, but it would still work) is that they could emulate some common video card (like a Voodoo3) that specs are openly available for, and just translate the hardware instructions for it into OpenGL calls for the host OS. No endian-ness problems if you're not just copying the instructions from one card to another.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember that sometime in the past they had support for the 3dfx Voodoo 3 cards - where has that gone?

Actually, they didn't. They only supported the Voodoo (and Voodoo 2 I think) cards, which worked differently from today's cards (and the Voodoo 3), because they were basically just 3D accelerators.

Re:What I want to know

[A_Non_Moose]

Connectix/Microsoft can't readd video card support because of endian issues.

Nvidia about the time they started making Mac video cards said that adding endian support is *trivial*.
Specifically they were talking about BI-endian support.

Kind of shot ATI in the foot (and themselves) when PC video cards sell for 70 bucks and the Mac equivalent sells for 300 bucks.

The reason the early voodoo cards were supported is because they were 3d only. If another 3d only card came on the market it could be done.


Uhh, not quite...the real reason was that the voodoo2 could be flashed to add the endian support for macs...irony struck when it could only be done on a PC. {chuckle}
Now, IIRC, there is a Mac flash program for 3dfx cards and for Nvidia/ATI cards.
Takes some digging to find, on occasion.
.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Battlefield1942 available for the Mac? Or are you saying that your mac is a little slow and can't handle all it?

Re:What I want to know

[FueledByRamen]

Nope - no Battlefield for the Mac. And as for the mac being too slow, Battlefield has one of the highest system requirement sets I've ever seen for a game - it NEEDS a Radeon 8500 / GF3 to be even remotely playable (no i810 for you), and a 2ghz P4 or AMD XP2000+ is required to run it to where the AI is usable (and it still consumes 25% of the CPU for that alone) - when you have a slower processor, the bots (of which there can be 50+ in a game, easily) just stand around until they're Panzerschrenked, which still happens on my Athlon XP2000+ gaming machine. It's hard on networks, too - 32kbps upstream per player is required to run a server! I'd love for there to be an optimized Mac port, but as the engine uses only Direct3d, it probably won't happen. It'd probably run just fine on a dualie Mac - one CPU for the AI, one for everything else...

Re:What I want to know

[coolgeek]

Of course not...it is only possible to emulate instructions of another CPU, and impossible to re-order words from one architechture to another. If anyone figures this algorithm out, better patent it quick!

Re:What I want to know

[bkr1_2k]

"Nvidia about the time they started making Mac video cards said that adding endian support is *trivial*.
Specifically they were talking about BI-endian support."
Well of course...everyone knows it's easy to get BI support, they like everything. It's the "not so BI" that you have to get on board.

bkr

Re:What I want to know

[viper66]

It doesnt need a GF3/8500. It was playable on my GF1 DDR, and I hardly noticed any speed improvement on a GF4 in the same system. The 9700 I have now though (GF4 died) runs it really smooth.

Re:What I want to know

[randyest]

OK, I'll bite -- what are you talking about? [It is] impossible to re-order words from one architechture to another?

Is this a joke, or a troll, or what? Of course it's possible to do just about anything in software. Maybe you meant impractical or something like that.

Re-ordering, BTW, in hardware or software, is trivial. Maybe we're thinking of two different things, but the micro-topic was big/little-endian compatibility, and changing that is easyif it's known to be one or the other, which it is in this case.

Patent this?:
tmp = a; a = b; b = tmp?

You have to mean something other than what you typed, and I'm interested.

Re:What I want to know

[anarkhos]

You can have remote accelerated GLX by running Apple's X11 server. I've even used this in conjunction with WINE, for example running gears.exe

Re:What I want to know

[drzhivago]

I've had Battlefield 1942 for awhile now, and I've never played the single player missions. ;)

FWIW, the multiplayer demo ran fine on an 800 P3/gf4. (I've since upgraded to a faster box).

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear of the halting problem?

Re:What I want to know

[Paradise Pete]

Ever hear of the halting problem?

Yeah. A guy was explaining it to me once, but he kept going on and on. I wasn't sure if he was ever going to finish, so I left.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked in VPC4 & OS 9. The problem is that OS X will never support the VooDoo cards, so it doesn't matter is VPC does anyway.

Re:What I want to know

[coolgeek]

I felt the post to which I was replying was pretty foolish, saying "Connectix/Microsoft can't readd video card support because of endian issues.". I don't see that there actually would need to be any endian translation as the driver HAS to give data to the card in *its* native format, although I admit I have not researched the topic in depth. Besides, if reordering is actually needed, what? we can't call swab()?

I allowed the fact that it received a +3 Interesting to drive me to sarcasm. The hard part in emulating (and yes, I've worked on an emulator before) is the volume of code needed to pretend to be each and every opcode of the target machine, and correct replication of undocumented "features" (I call them bugs), *NOT* swabbing the bytes. But then again, why would I expect any kind of sanity in a sub-thread that heads off with someone wishing they could play Battlefield 1942 on a Mac under VPC? Note: I am a Mac user, and I use my P4 machine for playing bf1942.

Anyway, the sarcasm was intended to obviate the twitfulness of such a comment. I thought the punch about patenting it would drive it home as obviously humorous. I apologize for having mislead you...this is always a risk with sarcasm.

Re:What I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's just you, I've never had *any* AI problems with with my XP1800+. (I do have a GF4 4600 Ti, but that's not going to speed up anything AI related).

It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[nycroft]

A lot of us Mac true believers would probably cringe at the thought that Microsoft is getting its grubby hands all over a cherished Mac product. I freaked out at first, I'll admit it. But after I calmed down I started to think rationally.

What could be better? I think MS would be crazy to kill it off. So that leaves only better support for the product and smoother operation (we hope). I had loads of trouble with version 5. Hangs, freezes, and everything. Maybe now (and I know that a lot of hardcore Macers will freak out when I say this) Macs and Windows will finally start to get along.

Just think positive.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[binaryDigit]

I think MS would be crazy to kill it off

Why would you think this? Can't imagine that the numbers of users are huge enough for Microsoft to really care. Microsoft bought them for use on x86 systems to add enterprise level partioning to NT server. They don't care about the Mac version (not primarily anyway). Unfortunately we are at their whim here, if they are feeling generous then we _may_ benefit. If however they decide that it's not worth their time, then they can deprive Mac users of a very useful and hard to replace app.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[rthille]

The reason that people freak out, and the reason I bought VPC 6 the day I found out Microsoft bought it was that I wanted Virtual PC, not Virtual Windows. I bought it without any windows, and now I can run Linux and Wine which will let me run the 1 piece of Windows software I want to run (Garmin MapSource).

Who thinks that Microsoft will go out of their way to make sure that Microsoft VPC will run 'alternate' operating systems?

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Dephex Twin]

They don't care about the Mac version (not primarily anyway). Unfortunately we are at their whim here, if they are feeling generous then we _may_ benefit. If however they decide that it's not worth their time, then they can deprive Mac users of a very useful and hard to replace app.

I don't see why they are being generous to keep it going. I would imagine that significant majority of the copies of VPC that are sold are the ones that are bundled with Windows. Microsoft isn't a hardware company, so to them, this is as good as the person owning an x86 box.

In my opinion, MS would see it like: "we could keep this app going, and keep selling Windows and other MS products to Mac users, or we could kill it off, add more fuel to the abusive monopoly fire, and *possibly* have some of those VPC users go buy a PC with Windows."

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[nycroft]

Hey, I'm not the marketing strategist at MS, but look at the beating they're taking on the XBox...They're losing something like a hundred dollars per unit because they hope it'll pay off someday. Maybe that's what they're hoping with VPC. They're making a decent amount with Office:Mac (I think they're the leading Mac software developer besides Apple).

I don't know. I just thought some optimism was in need here. Don't be such a sourpuss.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[barc0001]

Microsoft won't kill it off. They'll just fire all their Mac Office developers and tell everyone who wants to run future versions of Office on a Mac that all they need to do is buy the Virtual PC, a copy of Windows, and Office for Windows, and then they can have Office on their Mac. After all, why sell only one product to fill someone's need when you can force three down their throat instead?

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[binaryDigit]

I don't see why they are being generous to keep it going. I would imagine that significant majority of the copies of VPC that are sold are the ones that are bundled with Windows. Microsoft isn't a hardware company, so to them, this is as good as the person owning an x86 box.

It's called economics, do they make enough money on those copies of WinXXX to justify the expense of keeping VPC in the product mix. Macs are what 4% of the PC market, and out of that 4% how many are running VPC with an actual purchased copy of WinXXX. We're talking a pittance, not even a blip on their radar. Even more the case that a purchase of VPC most likely does not translate into a copy of any other M$ software (Office for instance).

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[binaryDigit]

Hey, I'm not the marketing strategist at MS, but look at the beating they're taking on the XBox...They're losing something like a hundred dollars per unit because they hope it'll pay off someday. Maybe that's what they're hoping with VPC.

Completely different scenerios here. With xbox they're trying to dominate a huge market, not the case with VPC.

Don't be such a sourpuss.

One mans sourpuss is another mans realist ;) Didn't think I was being a sourpuss, just trying to make an educated evaluation of the situation. I didn't say that Microsoft WOULD dump VPC, just that if they DID, it wouldn't be shocking, and unlike some other Mac folks, I wouldn't attribute it to be an act of Microsoft predatory monopolistic business tendencies, just sound business.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Planesdragon]

It's called economics, do they make enough money on those copies of WinXXX to justify

Hey, this is _Microsoft_ we're talking about--the company who has the bulk of their products lose money and be supported by Windows + Office.

VPC is a windows-seller, and if they can make money off of it, then they're going to keep selling it.

(The question is, really, if the not-bundled-with-windows version will suddenly be twice as expensive as the bundled-with-windows version.)

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[tshak]

...after I calmed down I started to think rationally...

You must be new here :-)

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[djward]

That should be just about the time the MacOSX Aqua, not X11) port of OpenOffice.org is happy and stable, and we can say "screw 'em!" about M$ office.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[swb]

I wouldn't be surprised if future Mac products were just the windows versions integrated with an application-specific VirtualPC wrapper.

This way they don't even have to make Mac-specific applications at all, just maintain the wrapper.

I don't know how performance-inducing this would be, but it'd save a ton of development time.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Ciderx]

It is very beneficial to keep Virtual PC going. Why? Profit.

Let's just say they kill it off and 20% of Mac owners sell up and buy PCs.

Or they keep it going, make it better, and 30% of all Mac owners buy it.

Which equals more profit to Microsoft? 20% owners paying OEM Windows licenses or 30% paying full consumer priced Windows licenses?

Its not a bad bit of profit for Microsoft, when you consider that Virtual PC was a minor after-thought for why they bought the technology...

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[binaryDigit]

Which equals more profit to Microsoft? 20% owners paying OEM Windows licenses or 30% paying full consumer priced Windows licenses?

But you're assuming that VPC itself costs Microsoft nothing. Better to have a slightly lower margin on a product that basically is paid for than to get a slightly higher margin on said product, but then also have how ever much it costs for them to maintain and support VPC itself. Plus, do you really think that 20% of Mac users own VPC? I'm not even assuming that any Mac users switch. Remember, the product costs for any particular version of Windows has long since been paid for and so additional Windows licenses effectively cost them nothing (hence their massive profits).

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Dephex Twin]

It's called economics, do they make enough money on those copies of WinXXX to justify the expense of keeping VPC in the product mix.

Ahhhh, "economics"! I do believe I've heard of it! Thanks :P

I know that there is a cost-to-benefit ratio here, but you and I can only speculate blindly exactly how that really works out, so there's not much point. I was only pointing out that a copy of VPC does not equal a user who MS can't get at, and the legal repurcussions of buying VPC for Mac and killing it might not be good either. Also the number of VPC users and the number who get a bundled copy of Windows is also totally speculating, and there's no point in making up numbers on it.

Even more the case that a purchase of VPC most likely does not translate into a copy of any other M$ software (Office for instance).

No, not Office, but what about all of their business-related software? What about MS Access and Outlook? What about all the database stuff? And so on.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[binaryDigit]

but you and I can only speculate blindly exactly how that really works out, so there's not much point.

I whole heartedly agree, that's why you won't find a single point of speculation in my post (at least about numbers). Just merely pointing out that Microsoft has a decision to make that is both dependant on their strategic direction and economics. The original poster seemed to imply that it was primarily a strategic decision, I pointed out that it COULD lean more towards a financial one. So in the end, I just brought up a point, and it would actually appear that, in the end, we are in agreement.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[ByteMangler_242]

I think you may be missing the real point. If Microsoft runs VPC, they can optimize it to run on Macs well, then does Microsoft care what box you run it on? By improving VPC, they make windows converts, which will hopefully (in MS marketing guy's dreams) buy Windows again, either on x86 hardware or virtual on a PowerPC.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[geekoid]

or push it hard, get fewer and fewqer apps ported to MAC, then kill it.
Mac user would have to say, do I stop using this product and sit on my but until someone writes an equivalent application, or do I go out and by a Windows machine and get back to work?

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[nycroft]

I hear ya. Sorry for the sourpuss crack. None of us really knows how things are going to turn out. VPC could be a huge cash for MS or a giant piece of crap. Then again, I think the money men over there have enough green to give all this a shot and not send MS down the tubes (what could besides armageddon?).

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what he said.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[fermion]

Microsoft doesn't need to kill VPC for damage to be done. All they need to do is carry on with the nromal MS model. MS is horrible at keeping standards, making sure that their code plays well with others, and keeping focused on core objectives. The core task of VPC is to emulate a x86 and let the Mac run other OS.

One can imagine MS including the usually excessive number of bells and whistles, and optimizing code for the latest version of windows. A fortunate consequence might be that VPC that will only run the latest version of Windows. In response to the criticism, MS will state it is only meeting customer demand for faster emulation. Anti-competitive behavior has nothing to do with the motivation. The only way they can have Linux run on VPC is to comprise performance and stability, and users would not like that. And allowing users to run old versions of Windows is a disservice to the customers.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't imagine that the numbers of users are huge enough for Microsoft to really care.

Last time I checked, Apple was only behind Dell and HP/Compaq as the third largest hardware company, and VPC is running on many of them. Hypothetically, for example, if Dells only ran Linux and not Windows, wouldn't it be worth Microsoft's time to find a way to make Windows run on Dells? People look at Apple's OS market share and forget that Apple is one of the world biggest hardware companies, and every Apple running VPC is just as good to MS as every Dell that runs Windows-- even better, now that MS can charge the disproportionately affluent Mac users for both VPC and Windows.

That said, it is true that what Microsoft really wants from VirtualPC is the capacity to add virtual machine capabilities to future versions of Windows. Also, if Microsoft were serious about confronting any potential threat from Linux, the way to do it would be to distribute Linux running under VPC with every box of Windows XP++ pro. Why run only Linux when you can run Windows and (a MS-perversion of) Linux simultaneously with no need for boot loaders?

Also, VPC could solve some backward-compatibility bloating problems for Microsoft, much as the Classic Environment handles backward-compatibility under Mac OS X. If MS were to bundle VPC into Windows, MS could streamline its new OSs, while people who want backwards-compatibility can just run their old software under VPC, bundled with the OS.

As cool as all that is, the Mac market is still big enough for MS to want to penetrate with its platform software (use whichever connotation of penetration that you think best fits :).

they can deprive Mac users of a very useful and hard to replace app.

Yeah, but the antitrust lawsuit would cost them a lot more than keeping up the R&D on VPC for Macs. Keep in mind that Microsoft is legally a monopoly, which prevents them from doing a lot of things that other companies would be free to do. Anything smelling of anti-competitive changes in behavior would result in an instant injuction preventing MS from changing until/unless a court approves the change.

Sucks to be a monopoly, because you end up having to ask the government's permission to just to wipe your nose.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why run only Linux when you can run Windows and (a MS-perversion of) Linux simultaneously with no need for boot loaders?

Well, that could be, but also consider that after essentially making VPC for PCs as well as the Darwin flavor of BSD, Connectix had been rumored to leverage its existing licenses with MS to develop VPC for Linux, which, somewhat like WINE, would have provided an unequivocally legal means of running Windows under Linux.

By buying VPC, MS has pre-emptively nipped the rumors in the bud by buying its open-ended licensing program back from Connectix.

Makes me wonder how easily the MS/VPC deal passed SEC muster.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[quecojones]

I don't know how performance-inducing this would be, but it'd save a ton of development time.

It would probably even help Apple if they do this. With increased performance requirements, it just means another reason for Mac users to have to upgrade their machines.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, they can optimize it to run well. Remember the Office 6 debacle? Damn thing won't run well on CURRENT systems, much less the ones available back then.

Office v.X still is a bloated pig, but at least it's not so slow as to be unuseable.

MS intentionally fscked up 6 to try and kill Apple, plain and simple - "oh, yeah, we released Office for the Mac, but see how SLOW it is? That's the best we could DO, and we've got a money-printing machine in the back room! You obviously need a Windows desktop."

Just wait, they'll play games with the Mac Business Unit too. All MS cares about when it comes to Connectix products is Virtual Server, they'll have no problem nuking the rest of the product line. Christ, they don't even have to worry about profitability for any other division 'cept OS and Office, and those divisions have ridiculous budgets... to run Connectix's retail products into the ground is but a blip on their radar.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[MoneyT]

I wonder, if Microsoft killed the project, would it be possible for connectix to rebuild the project and rerelease under a new name? They have to have the original code somewhere, a little bit of tweaking and they could be back in business.

Re:It matters that Microsoft bought it.

[Moofie]

They did this, and called it (if I remember correctly) MS Office 4.0.2. (Basically Word 6 and Excel 5) Mac users failed to buy it in droves.

Mostly because it was incredibly ugly, and worked just like the stupid Windows version that they bought a Mac to not have to use in the first place.

Hmmmm...

[superdan2k]

Anyone else notice that the row of pictures at the bottom of the page, the old Linux versions of VirtualPC seem to have gone missing with Version 6? Hmmm, and Microsoft bought VPC from Connectix, you say? Hmmm. Imagine my surprise.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Robotech_Master]

They went missing sooner than that. Try, the day (or maybe the day after) Microsoft bought Connectix. A Mac friend of mine wanted to get ahold of them when he heard that news...and found no sign on their website that they had ever supported Linux.

Re:Hmmmm...

[extra88]

They stopped selling a Red Hat Guest OS Pack well before the buyout was announced (someone I know found it missing in January but I think it went away in late Fall 2002). It's disappearance might still be tied to the buyout or they might have decided that it wasn't profitable (possibly because of how frequently Red Hat is updated compared to Windows).

The VPC for Windows Technical Reference PDFis still online and contains information about running various non Microsoft OS's. Even though it says "for Windows" almost everything applies to the Mac version as well because the emulated hardware is the same (yes, you can move virtual drive files between Mac and Windows versions of VPC).

The Connectix forum for VPC for Mac (as well as the one for Windows) also has a section dedicated to iscussing Linux/Unix as a Guest OS and another for "Other OSs." The forum moderators (I assume they work for Connectix) do participate in some discussions.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Mac friend of mine wanted to get ahold of them when he heard that news...and found no sign on their website that they had ever supported Linux.

That's a bunch of bull. You don't have any friends.

Re:Hmmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. The description of VirtualPC for Windows clearly states that you can run Linux Os' on any of the VirtualPC products.

The end of Office for Mac?

[elflet]

will this mean the end of Office for Mac?

That's not likely. Office:Mac is already a cash cow for Microsoft; MS had the single largest share of the Macintosh software market in the 90s and probably still does. There's no profit in tossing the mature cross-development system they're using and probably ticking-off the installed base of Mac users.

Really, there'd be no money in it for MS to try and move Office:Mac users to Office on Windows.

Re:The end of Office for Mac?

[Gortbusters.org]

Imagine if MS sold Office for Linux... they'd have the single largest share of the Linux software market!

As it stands now, who has the largest share, Ximian Connector? Star Office?

Re:The end of Office for Mac?

[geekoid]

excpet they would no longer need to pay the decvelopers,packagining costs, and other associated costs.

Re:The end of Office for Mac?

[Joe Tie.]

Imagine if MS sold Office for Linux... they'd have the single largest share of the Linux software market!

Possibly... I have a hard time thinking that they'd get a large amount of people using Linux to buy it. I've had to flee enough Linux sites that became infested with "M$ sux! LOLOLOL!!1" folks to think they'd have an uphill battle. Personally I think they'd have a hard time keeping up with even the far cheeper sales of wineX subscriptions, or other fairly cheap software.

What's the application?

[grammaticaster]

I work in a mixed Mac / PC environment. I've found that the better solution to interoperability problems is to simply have computers on both platforms; we never have conversion problems, because the programs that run on PC's only don't output data that needs to be used on the Mac. Besides, for $249, you can almost buy a cheap PC and KVM. i just don't see the point. Who needs Virtual PC?

Re:What's the application?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a mac powerbook. You saying I should carry two notebooks?

There ARE valid useful applications.

Re:What's the application?

[warpath]

Who needs Virtual PC?

I think Pudge's review explains a situation where VPC is better than a real PC:

My Windows needs are few. I am a perl developer; I work on perl and release perl software. Occasionally, I want to test on Windows. Further, I am a Slash developer, and sometimes our users complain about certain bugs that only show up on certain browsers, so I want to test that on Windows too. And every once in awhile, there is some software I need that is Windows-only.

If you only need the PC every rare once in a while, why take up the real estate/ethernet port/power/powerstrip socket/whatever? Then there's also those who might be working on PowerBooks or iBooks primarily.

I'd say it has it's uses. (Of course, since OSX came out, I am struggling for a reason to ever boot VPC into RedHat again. heh.)

Re:What's the application?

[Spencerian]

1) Because carrying two computers is impractical if you have a laptop, and PC work is impossible without VPC if you are a mobile Mac.

2) Because transferring data between Macs and PCs, despite Mac OS X, can still be a pain. VPC makes it easy to read files without great pains if you have the software.

3) Because some people need an environment where they can test matters without forking over additional cash.

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.

5) VPC is a true clone. Every single copy is identical. It's a perfect environment for general testing. You can't get that from any store-bought or homebrew PC. Each will have slightly different parts.

6) VPC is the best way to connect to Windows resources and applications that are steadfastly Windows-only.

7) Respectfully speaking, most people that use VPC don't do the same things you do.

I use VPC to connect to my company's VPN. Quick, I don't have to expend extra effort or make more room on my desk, and can move documents back and forth as I need to.

Better--I can copy my HD with XP as a disk image and move it around, changing it for use with my home and with a company net; in effect, two instances of XP from a single registration. Try THAT with your single-user copy of XP on a real PC.

Microsoft bought VPC and the other VM technologies because they work. Microsoft is many things, but business-wise they are far from stupid or they wouldn't be a rich company. As for ethics, well...

Re:What's the application?

[happystink]

I'm very curious, what KVMwould you suggest, how woul dyou hook this up? I've wanted to do this between my imac and pc for a while, but i'm not sure how or if it's possible with an imac.. (flat screen new ones)

Re:What's the application?

[Contact]

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.

I run a PC and Mac here at work, using a Mitsubishi DP 900 U monitor. It has dual inputs (one VGA, one BNC) and a USB hub with two upstream ports - when I hit the switch on the front of the monitor to swap the video input, it automagically swaps the USB peripherals between the two machines as well, with almost no delay (less than a second). I'd occasionally get problems with Mac OS 9, but under X it all works perfectly.

As a dual machine solution goes, it's pretty elegant - I have one keyboard, monitor and mouse driving two machines, and i don't suffer the quality loss of a "normal" KVM switcher.

Unfortunately, the new Mitsubishi monitors don't offer this functionality any more, and I'm not aware of any current monitors that do...if anyone does, please post!

Re:What's the application?

[pudge]

(Of course, since OSX came out, I am struggling for a reason to ever boot VPC into RedHat again. heh.)

Totally ... I have a Linux box here for Slashdot development, but I've moved it all over to my TiBook. I use the Linux box as an ssh gateway, mail server, and nightly backup of my TiBook to its 30GB drive. And I could move all of those services over to Mac OS X. If I ever replace my local Mac OS X server (right now it is a PowerBook G3/500) with a desktop Mac, with more room for HD, more power, etc., I will probably retire the Linux box.

Well, then again, as with Windows, I use the Linux box for testing stuff. But I could always just install Linux under VPC too ...

Re:What's the application?

[Tikiman]

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.

I did the two keyboard thing until I found x2vnc. I just run a vnc server on my windows box, fire up x2vnc on the linux box, and presto - seamless mouse and keyboard interaction over the OS barrier. For novelty reasons alone it's worth checking out.

Re:What's the application?

[BrookHarty]

Also win2vnc works for the other direction. Windows to X.

BTW, i use a 4 port KVM, so I can share 1 21inch monitor with my laptop docking station/linux box/test box/sun box, works perfectly, and I bought OEM cables for 15 bux per pack for video/ps2 cables. KVM's rule.

Re:What's the application?

[platipusrc]

I have a Mitsubishi DP 900U as well. I liked it, and wanted a 21" monitor (it's actually a 22", but has the same viewable as a normal 21, it just looks better), so I bought the Mitsubishi DP 2060U. It also has dual inputs with a button on the front, but this one has two VGA inputs. I'm not sure how the USB hub switching works though. I haven't used it to switch USB peripherals. Tom's Hardware mentioned it in a monitor review. BTW, the prices from Pricegrabber are for the wrong monitor. The 2060U is closer to $750. They may have moved up to the 2070 by now, too.

Re:What's the application?

[ISPTech]

1) Because carrying two computers is impractical if you have a laptop, and PC work is impossible without VPC if you are a mobile Mac.
Granted.

2) Because transferring data between Macs and PCs, despite Mac OS X, can still be a pain. VPC makes it easy to read files without great pains if you have the software.
OS 10.2 has full smb support. Apple is even keeping it up to date when security issues come out. I mounted my windows machine on the mac and the mac on the windows machine yesterday. Piece of cake.

3) Because some people need an environment where they can test matters without forking over additional cash.
As the article you are replying to pointed out you can normally get a cheap windows box for less than the $200+ price tag of VPC 6. If you are pirating VPC 6 then that is a different matter altogether.

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.
Use digital KVM's instead of analog. You can buy used monitors for less than most KVM's if space is not an issue. Most KVM's do suck though. :-)

5) VPC is a true clone. Every single copy is identical. It's a perfect environment for general testing. You can't get that from any store-bought or homebrew PC. Each will have slightly different parts.
Having a second machine for about the same cost as VPC is the real thing. Why pay for a clone when you can have the real thing at your disposal. (...and I don't even like windows.)

6) VPC is the best way to connect to Windows resources and applications that are steadfastly Windows-only.
As opposed to say a windows machine?

7) Respectfully speaking, most people that use VPC don't do the same things you do.
Extending the same respect, Clones are never exactly the real thing. Use a tip from the WINE group: When you need a windows machine to do something only allowed in windows, get a windows machine.

Re:What's the application?

[geekoid]

so what you are saying, i norder to do the work you need to do, you would hve to by a new laptop that had windows on it?
How is that bad for MS?

Re:What's the application?

[afantee]

>> I use VPC to connect to my company's VPN. You can use OS X for VPN as well.

Re:What's the application?

[Mr Bubble]

Easy.

1)Why have a big clunky box, monitor, ups, keyboard, mouse etc when you can just click a couple of times and you are in Windows?

2)Why worry about re-installing Windows? Virtual PC let's you roll Windows back to an earlier state.

3) Forget LILO, rack up 5 or 6 different OSs on one machine - all a couple clicks away.

4) It's fun to watch your clueless Windows friends when you run it in Full screen mode on your Mac.

Re:What's the application?

[Spencerian]

WINE isn't available for the Macintosh, and I'm not a programmer and have "gobs" of time to play with anything. I'm at a job in a Windows environment, and I must play with the rest of the kids. And the rest of the kids use Windows and will never change for now. MS zealotry will not fulfill the needs of my job.

I use SMB support, but there is a difference between SAMBA (generic SMB) and genuine Windows support. Don't kid me on this, as I use Windows regularly as much as I do Mac OS, old and new. File corruption occasionally ruins a Mac user's day with SMB.

I own my copies of VPC.

I'm a minimalist when it comes to cables, which suck. KVMs just add cables. I have a digital KVM at my disposal, and I know that Apple's USB keyboards work fine with a Windows box. It's just extra crap.

I don't need speed or routine use. I need occasional access. VPC is NyQuil, not air. I don't want to or need to expose myself to extra PC hardware or software, except perhaps, to build a box for some gaming. Mac OS X does 95% of what is needed--the rest comes from VPC.

It doesn't sound as if you work in a pure Windows environment, and that's a good thing for you. But most businesses don't provide that luxury.

With VPC, I can also test many OSes on my computer without having to format things to kingdom come. I have Red Hat 8 and XP and plan on trying out other Linux distros to further my knowledge. You can do that on a PC, too, but for the time it takes me to make all the CDs from ISOs...please. I can mount ISO images as virtual CDs and load things fine.

You do know that VPC is available for Windows. There's a reason why.

Re:What's the application?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for ethics, well, let's just say $teve Job$ isn't exactly a martyr saint. :)

Re:What's the application?

[Anonymous Coward]

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.

Here's my solution to that for running Windows 2000 Pro (using Apple's X11 server):

macosxbox% ssh -n redhatlinuxbox "setenv DISPLAY macosxbox:0.0 ; vmware"

The only problems I've really had with this setup are the mouse getting confused where its location is when near the left side of my 2nd monitor (e.g. click on a PC app menu and suddenly the system thinks I just clicked on a different Mac app at the right edge of my main monitor). Still debugging that one; but otherwise, it works pretty damn well. Not having to use a different monitor/keyboard is awesome.

I was hoping to play more games

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Very oldies like Civilization run too fast but anything recent is far too slow. AOE2, for example, crawls on a 550MHz PowerBook and an oldie like the origonal Command and Conquer are too slow to be playable. You have to go back as far as Warfract (I!) or Settlers II to find a real time graphics game that plays fine. Microprose's Magic the Gathering works well however. Of course there's no problem running the original Infocom adventure games for that real retro experience. I found the original Tomb Raider almost tolerable. Surprisingly I found the old PC Wolfenstein a bit choppy on v5 but I'll try v6 some time soon. I tried the recent freebie GTA. It actually runs but too slow to be fun. On a 1GHz PowerBook it may actually be playable.

All in all it's a fine app. Integration of individual Windows apps into the dock is cool.

BTW I originally bought v5 with PC-DOC and installed my own Windows 98 (legally I might add).

I've also tried running every OS I could get my hands on. Pretty well everything from Plan 9 to Menuet runs. The only thing that failed was Darwin - that was on v5.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run the text based Infocom stuff (Zork, et al) in a terminal window

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I know, and I do. I also run it on my Palm.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[smagoun]

Command & Conquer (and Red Alert) worked quite well in VPC last I tried them on my 7600 w/ 450mhz G4. I used to play the original GTA on that machine back when I had a 266mhz G3, and it was more than playable. This is all under OS 9, however; OS 9 has always provided better performance for VPC than OS X. Give that a shot, you might be surprised at the difference.

Also keep in mind that games aren't a priority for the VPC team, and Connectix has repeatedly said that VPC is not a gaming solution.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[runenfool]

I suggest to upgrade to version 6. Its quite a bit faster.

With that said, you may also boot back into OS 9. Virtual PC took something like a 50 percent performance hit with the X upgrade. It was actually getting pretty fast under classic.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[DigitalVolume]

BeOS didn't like to run well on VPC either. From any version of either BeOS or VPC that I've tried, including version 6 of VPC.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I heard Tomb Raider works pretty well under OS 9 too. I actually installed OS 9 only recently, partly in order to try running the Mac versions of the Infocom games 'natively' (as well as to get one of my old printers working). It's a bit of a pain to have to reboot. Do VPC 5 and 6 run under 9?

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[Erik K. Veland]

Hmmm... You'll find that a lot of the oldies have true classic mac versions. I have Civ I, II, CTP & III on this computer. Command & Concquer can also be found as well as Age of Empires 2 runs on Mac OS X of course. There's plenty of mac oldies availible including Wolfenstein, Doom, Tomb Raider, Warcraft I, II, III, Infocom Adventures etc. etc.

You won't find GTA and Magic The Gathering, but all the others already exist on native for Mac.

Re:I was hoping to play more games

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

True. It's just that I've already paid for many of these games for PC and unfortunately Blizzard seem to be the only company decent enough to give away Mac and PC versions on the same disk.

Big advantages for developers

[BWJones]

Interestingly, I was talking with a Windows developer on the plane about a year ago and he was telling me that using Virtual PC on the Mac for Windows development was actually easier than developing on a dedicated Windows machine because in VirtualPC, Windows is an image that can be readily backed up and restored with a drag and drop should you do something really stupid with the registry or kernel.

Re:Big advantages for developers

[Lynn Benfield]

I highly doubt they were using the Mac version for development - they were much more likely to be using the Windows version of VPC.

This will give you near-native speed since the instruction set doesn't need to be interpreted, but you can still have multiple virtual machines (which definitely makes life easier: particularly for QA, where you can run multiple versions of Windows for testing and just fetch a fresh disk image when things get broken).

This whole virtual-x86-machine-on-x86 is exactly why MS bought them: the fact that there's a Mac version was pretty incidental to them I imagine - what they're really after is the virtual server market.

Re:Big advantages for developers

[BWJones]

I highly doubt they were using the Mac version for development - they were much more likely to be using the Windows version of VPC.

Actually, yes he was. We were sitting side by side with our Apple laptops. I was preparing for a talk at a conference and he was writing code.

This will give you near-native speed since the instruction set doesn't need to be interpreted, but you can still have multiple virtual machines (which definitely makes life easier: particularly for QA, where you can run multiple versions of Windows for testing and just fetch a fresh disk image when things get broken).

He was writing for XP and W2k for which he had disc images for each.

This whole virtual-x86-machine-on-x86 is exactly why MS bought them: the fact that there's a Mac version was pretty incidental to them I imagine - what they're really after is the virtual server market.

I absolutely agree.

Re:Big advantages for developers

[Lynn Benfield]

Actually, yes he was. We were sitting side by side with our Apple laptops. I was preparing for a talk at a conference and he was writing code.

Hmm, he's got more patience than me then... :-)

I tried doing Mac+PC development on a Mac using VPC and VC++, but found it was incredibly slow (as in a 30 minute build on the Mac would be several hours on the PC). Perhaps I just had something misconfigured or something, but we eventually gave in and got a bare-bones PC for doing builds on.

Re:Big advantages for developers

[JamieF]

I think he probably started with "I want to / already own a Mac but I have to develop for Windows" and used that to rationalize away the performance penalty.

I guess if he were cross-developing somehow, either by using a cross-compiler or a portable programming environment, that wouldn't be too painful - edit on MacOS, compile on MacOS, test on Windows - but if he was just running Windows full screen and doing all his development in there, he was either being disingenuous or ignorant.

Disingenuous, if he were so bullheaded that he HAD to have a PowerBook just to make himself feel kewl even though he really needed to live in Windows all day. Seriously, buy a freaking $400 used Thinkpad on eBay, stick a big Apple sticker on it, and get over yourself. It doesn't make you more l33t to boot into MacOS X just to boot into fullscreen Win2K immediately afterwards; it makes you a dork.

Or, maybe he was just ignorant, because there are plenty of solutions that give you the same functionality (such as VMWare, Ghost, or GoBack) without requiring a PowerBook (whose price performance just ain't in the same ballpark as an x86 laptop, and never has been) and without having to run everything in emulation (slowing it down even more).

Re:Big advantages for developers

[smallpaul]

Maybe Virtual PC is better for Windows development than just Windows (for repeatibility reasons) but it is a hell of a lot slower than running Windows under VMWare under Windows (or Linux).

Re:Big advantages for developers

[Anonymous Coward]

eriously, buy a freaking $400 used Thinkpad on eBay, stick a big Apple sticker on it, and get over yourself. It doesn't make you more l33t to boot into MacOS X just to boot into fullscreen Win2K immediately afterwards; it makes you a dork.

That I agree with, and its a funny way to put it.

Or, maybe he was just ignorant, because there are plenty of solutions that give you the same functionality (such as VMWare, Ghost, or GoBack) without requiring a PowerBook (whose price performance just ain't in the same ballpark as an x86 laptop, and never has been)

That is a stealth troll. PowerBooks not only hold their own vs. PC notebooks on battery and performance, it's generally considered one of the best laptops in the world. (No, i don't own one; I wish I did.)

My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[heldlikesound]

I run OSX 10.2.4 on a 700 mHz iBook with 384MB of RAM. Not, a "loaded" machine at all, but quick enough for web dev. and some light multi-media work. I ran VPC with Win 98, and the results were pretty pathetic, I'd click on a window to move it and would have to wait five seconds for the system to even respond, it was basically unusable.

Enter VPC6. I upgraded to VPC6 and installed Win 2000 Pro, (which has always been the best of the worst in my opinion), and was pleasantly suprised to find it runs pretty smoothly, apps are actually useful now, I use Nokia's WAP development toolkit, and while it's not setting speed records on my computer, it works for what I need it to do.

So, all of you familar with the scientific method are now asking, "So was it the upgrade of the OS or VPC that made the speed in increase?" Well, I didn't do any controlled experiments, but it feels like it was the upgrade. Your unpleasant, but neccesary results may vary.

On a related note, Microsofts purchase of Virtual PC was a predictably smart and evil business move. Does anyone actually believe that Microsoft, will make this a better program? I'm glad that VPC6 was a relatively nice upgrade, I don't expect to see another useful emulator until Bochs on OSX devaporizes...

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[mkelley]

On version 5, there were issues with the 9x code that made it slower than a VPC with NT4. I dropped 98 on VPC and used NT4 sp6 instead. Same browsers, but it ran about 30% faster.

98 under version 6 does seem flaster, while Nt screams.

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess next time you should buy a real machine

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[Jon Abbott]

This is true -- there are some remnants of 16 bit code in WIndows 9x that Virtual PC doesn't handle well. Because NT/XP/2000 is all 32-bit, everything is easily emulated and runs nicely.

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[angst_ridden_hipster]

This is interesting.

I'm considering getting VPC to do Palm OS development with Codewarrior 9. Metrowerks has stopped supporting the Mac as a platform for developing Palm stuff. (yeah, yeah. I know I should just switch over to the PRC-tool chain, but the Metrowerks debugger is has saved me great grief in the past.)

So this offers me some encouragement that this approach will be at least *possible*, if horrible and twisted.

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[HappyPuppy]

VPC on an iBook is quite usable with CodeWarrior 9. I use it to test ARM code on the Palm OS Simulator. it connects reliably (on CW 8, it took an average of 20 minutes of retrying/rebooting to get it too work!)

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Excellent! That's exectly what I'd hoped to hear!

Which version of VPC are you running? What speed iBook?

Thanks!

Re:My experience with upgrading from VPC5 to VPC6

[HappyPuppy]

>> Which version of VPC are you running? What speed iBook?

VPC: 5.0.4, Build #2404 (Minimum memory: 10000K, Preferred memory: 10002K).
iBook: 600 MHz, 640Meg RAM, Virtual memory on, Mac OS version 9.2.2

HTH.

virtual PC ...

[SuperDuG]

... for those who "Switched", but didn't quite realize what they were getting into ...

Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.

In true honesty I don't really see a need any longer for virtual PC except for Mac users that are used to a PC that want to keep using windows. With OS X I really can't think of anything in particular that I would need Virtual PC for. I would almost keep a *gasp* windows machine around if it were that important to me, OR, I would quit being lazy and learn something new.

Anyways, I remember the "rumors" of a MS Windows Release for PPC and I also remember "rumors" of Mac OS for x86. Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects. Innovation has been stifled by the almighty dollar on many an occassion, hence why free software is so appealing to so many.

Re:virtual PC ...

[Zelet]

I switched my laptop in the last few months and there isn't anything on my PC that I would need to emulate. I have everything I need on my mac - I have every X11 app and every Mac app... plus the great OS X developer tools.
When I switch to OS X desktop... I am going to miss some games - but I guess I can live without those. I might actually start to become productive. :)

Re:virtual PC ...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.

I don't know any anti-MS Mac zealots. I know tons of anti-MS Linux zealots, but the Mac users I know just prefer their Macs. When the time comes to run Microsoft software, or the occasional Windows program, they're happy to do it.

The Mac community isn't really a good place to find zealotry... unless you count the zealots from other communities who make the trip over here to mock and insult Mac users. We just ignore those people.

Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects.

When you hear hoofprints, think horses, not zebras. Not everything is best explained by a conspiracy theory.

Re:virtual PC ...

[FueledByRamen]

Anyways, I remember the "rumors" of a MS Windows Release for PPC and I also remember "rumors" of Mac OS for x86. Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects.

A Mac OS X for x86 does exist - it was available to beta testers until RC1 or RC2, when it was simply put back indoors. All of the OS X stuff obviously was crossplatform - it probably still is.

Windows 2000 for the PPC was killed off, but NT 4 for the PPC exists. Too bad it doesn't have drivers for any Mac hardware, and that it was designed to run on IBM's PPC workstations.

Re:virtual PC ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there was a PPC version of Windows NT for a little while. It was never meant to run on Macs though.

Re:virtual PC ...

[dsouth]

Unfortunately, there are still cases where having MS Windoze is necessary.

For example, my wife is a Mac user, but owns Virtual PC because a few of her upper level psychology courses use home-brewed simulation software that only runs under Windows. She avoids MS products like the plague, but the couses were degree requirements, so the options were:

1. Change majors.
2. Spend lots of time in the computer lab.
3. Suck it up, purchase VPC, and run the software on her laptop while sitting out on the deck wirelessly surfing over 802.11b in another window.

Which would you choose?

Re:virtual PC ...

[tbmaddux]

I don't know any anti-MS Mac zealots.

Well, there was the whole auditorium full of them booing when Jobs and Gates (on a screen) shared a keynote, or whatever that was. OTOH they got the first full soaking of Reality Distortion Field, so maybe they're all faithful converts now.

I don't really mind running MS Office on my Macs from a political/zealotry standpoint, but I do grit my teeth every time I encounter an annoying bug... like the way Word and Visual Basic (Equation Editor, Endnote CWYW plugin) doesn't work on my machine that has the Users folder on a separate partition, or the way I can't edit Preferences in Word X without a document open... it's the same sort of cruft that made me cheer when I moved to Mozilla 1.0, or punted the Microsoft media product for VLC...

I'm not a zealot. I'm just happier when my computer does what I want, and I find that Macs do more of what I want in ways that I want them to than Windows machines.

Re:virtual PC ...

[pudge]

I am an anti-MS Mac zealot, and I know many anti-MS Mac zealots. None of the longtime Mac users I know are EVER happy to run Windows; quite the opposite.

It is true I use and like Linux, but I have been a Mac user far longer than a Linux/Unix user, and I have hated Windows for pretty much all that time (well, Windows didn't exist when I became a Mac user, but I hated it since it came out).

Re:virtual PC ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so sure. There are some specialised software that don't run on OS X, like many qualitative analysis software that many social scientists used.

Re:virtual PC ...

[@madeus]

In true honesty I don't really see a need any longer for virtual PC except for Mac users that are used to a PC that want to keep using windows.

As stated in the review it's very useful for developers (like the review, and like me). You did read the review didn't you?

I would almost keep a *gasp* windows machine around if it were that important to me

Oh yeah *two* laptops or *one*. Let me think...

OR, I would quit being lazy and learn something new.

How about you quit being lazy and read the review?

Anyways, I remember the "rumors" of a MS Windows Release for PPC

A Rumour?

Windows NT for PPC was offically released!

NB: It was never ported to run on Macintosh hardware and was never indended to.

and I also remember "rumors" of Mac OS for x86.

Again - You think this is a Rumour?

Mac OS was ported to x86 as part of the StarTrek project, go Google FFS.

Additionaly there was Rhapsody of course, aka OpenStep with a menubar (and OpenStep ran on x86 long before it was ported to PPC).

VPC 6 & FreeBSD - Sound, yes; X, no; clock, wo

[nsayer]

I use VPC for Windows on occasion too, but I also have tried a few times to load FreeBSD as a guest. But it has some issues.

In the past, sound didn't work, but it appears that is fixed in 6.0.2. The usual sound configuration (ISA SB16, port 0x220, irq 5, dma 1 & 5) works.

X has never worked. It aparently works for Linux, but every time I try and start the X server under FreeBSD, I get a crash loading the int10 module. Nobody in the world seems to know why or how to fix it.

The clock (gettimeofday()) runs at almost double speed while the guest is running. The fix for this is to run a little daemon that syncs the guest to the host. This daemon is on Connectix's FTP server somewhere. It uses a pair of asm blocks with invalid (on a real CPU) instructions to ask VPC what the date and time are, and syncs the clock up on a periodic basis.

Of course, it's mostly pointless to run a FreeBSD guest under VPC on a mac, since MacOS X is already very much like FreeBSD (because, of course, a lot of it came from FreeBSD). It's mostly a curiosity thing.

Platform Specs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the specs of the platform you're running on? Or did I miss them? "Too slow" on an iBook might mean there's hope on a G4....

Re:Emulate, what ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Steal BSD
Step 2: Make BSD look like MAC

Its free with practically no restrictions. It would seem to be hard to steal. And its only userland. The kernel is mach based.

Step 3: Make BSD that looks like MAC look like Windoze

Its really Mach, with BSD layer, using naitive Mac interface, running a PC emulator.

Step 4: Profit

Yep. That why they did it. They do it pretty consistently. That why they've been rumored to be dying for 20+ years. Unlike a large number of Linux companies who just died, more than a few by surprise.

L0stb0Y

Truly.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[VeryPuzzled]

It would also be interresting to see exactly how well do different Mac models perform on Virtual PC (let's say on Windows 2000) according to popular benchmark applications. This way, we could roughly compare a certain type of PC with it's emulated Mac equivalent. The same could be done with Bochs, and would probably give good indices of how well both emulators performs. Since my main PC broke down, I've been looking torward Macs and since I still have a few softwares that would require Windows, I'm really wondering just how much "slower" the Macs really are when emulating a PC. So, since I don't yet own a Mac, I can't do the testing and post results. But I'm really interrested to see a review/site/post that has benchmark results and that can compare PCs to emulated PCs on Macs... ;-)

Not just for Windows obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

VirtualPC is invaluable to me for prototyping the FreeBSD servers I run. Obviously it doesn't emulate the hardware exactly, but I can get a good idea of what i'm going to face during an update, and I can create a trial run plan before I move on something.

And the "Virtual Switch" capability is neat.

Microsoft

[Hellraisr]

Maybe now they'll actually port it to PC so I can emulate a Mac on my PC. By the way, why hasn't anyone done this yet? If you can emulate PC on Mac, it only makes sense that you could emulate Mac on PC.

Re:Microsoft

[truenoir]

There are Mac emulators for PC. Basilisk for one. They actually work pretty well, however, the biggest things are that 1.) You can't emulate a PPC and 2.) You need a Mac ROM file (which to legally have means you probably need to go buy a used Mac for $5 anyway).

This pretty much limits you to 8.x MacOS levels, however, if you want to run some older Mac games or whatnot, it should be good enough. System 7.5.5 is available for free from Apple though, which makes it a solid choice for such a task.

Re:Microsoft

[oldstrat]

"If you can emulate PC on Mac, it only makes sense that you could emulate Mac on PC."

Thanks, this is good news, I can emulate a ZX81 on my PC, so it only makes sense that I could emulate the PC on my ZX81.

Now I can slap up a 9V battery load Win2K... Where'd the function keys go? Where'd my my mouse Go? Oh, and it appears that we never needed more than 16k.

Re:Microsoft

[Hellraisr]

I think the differences between a P4 and a G4 are a little bit less significant than what you are trying to do.

Also, are you actually saying a mac is the equivalent of a pc and a pc is the equivalent of a zx81? Because that seems to be the basis of your argument and it makes absolutely no sense.

Re:Microsoft

[k_187]

Because VPC emulates x86 on PPC, there are a couple of PPC emulators for windows, but the most recent OS they can run is like System 7.6 (maybe 8.1, I'm not sure). They're also ass slow. There's also much more of a market for windows apps on a Mac than Mac apps on windows.

Re:Microsoft

[Sycraft-fu]

Because there is little demand for it. I have never found myself saying "Damn, I wish I could do this but the app I need is Mac only". The very few tools I can think of that are Mac only, like FCP, have PC equivlants but more importantly need the speed of native hardware to be of any use. FCP would suck ass in an emulator.

Re:Microsoft

[WheresMyDingo]

The best Mac emulator for PC I know of is Basilisk II

It emulates 68k code though, not PPC, so you are stuck with MacOS 8.1 max, but on a fast PC you can run 68k code faster than any Motorola 68k processor ever did! You will need the ROM from a Quadra 650 (68040) for best results.

I was using it to run REALbasic REALbasic 3.5.2 -- the last 68k version. REALbasic can create Windows apps, but you have to run the IDE on the Mac-- that is, until version 5 which just came out but which you have to pay for all over again so I probably won't get it.

One cool thing is to access a Mac network from the PC-- the good old chooser running on Windows!

Microsoft owns this now

[JudgeFurious]

And so I cannot in good conscience upgrade my existing VPC5. I cannot condone their business practices so they get none of my money. Disney's in the same boat with me.

Besides I just got finished telling the kid (13 year old son) that he could pick from GameCube or Playstation 2 but no X-Box was entering our home so I guess it's time for me to back that up.

It's a shame, I really enjoyed VPC too.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot condone their business practices

And you can condone Apple's business practices:

• patenting scalar products and making sure that FreeType cannot include the bytecode interpreter while using FreeType themselves in their X server;
• killing FireWire by imposing licensing fees;
• ...

Please do not take me wrong: I think that Apple are making excellent products currently, and I'd love to own a mac. But they won't get any money from me.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[JudgeFurious]

Completely fair. One company is repeatedly in court and already convicted of abusing their monopoly. The other isn't snow white either granted but I don't their "sins" rate nearly as high as Microsofts.

We all make our own choices. You go with what seems right to you. I'm good with that.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[Ciderx]

Good God, you must be a total pain in the backside to have as a father.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[Powercntrl]

Besides I just got finished telling the kid (13 year old son) that he could pick from GameCube or Playstation 2 but no X-Box was entering our home so I guess it's time for me to back that up.

Pardon me for meddling in the affairs of a parent. You are free to raise your child however you see fit, but at 13, he's only 5 years away from adulthood. Instead of forcing your purchasing morals on him, why not explain the situation to him why you choose not to support Microsoft and let him make his own decision to support your beliefs or form his own. At least show each other you can compromise.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[JudgeFurious]

Not an issue, your point is well made. I did explain to him why we were going with one of the other two consoles. I also tried to make it fairly clear to him that when he's buying his own game console it's his money so he can buy what he wants without my point of view getting in his way.

If he goes out and makes the money to buy an Xbox he's welcome to it. If his grandparents (ahhh, the old end-run around your pig headed parents. I remember it well) drop a windfall in his lap he can buy an Xbox with it. He's not going to be getting games for that system from me but he's free to buy one with his money, and he does have money that he can clearly call his own.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[JudgeFurious]

How so? He's got a game console. It cost him nothing. the games that go in it also cost him nothing. He's got clothes on his back, food in his stomach, and a pretty decent pile of stuff IMO. And he's loved. He's got more than many kids out there and as I pointed out in another reply on this thread if he wants to go out and earn himself enough money to get an Xbox I'm not going to make an issue over it. I'm not going to contribute to it obviously but that would be his money, not mine.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[IamTheRealMike]

And so I cannot in good conscience upgrade my existing VPC5. I cannot condone their business practices so they get none of my money. Disney's in the same boat with me.

And yet Apples business is based on the same logic as Microsofts. Do you really believe that if it was Jobs instead of Gates at the top, he'd run the computing industry more justly? They've certainly pulled enough stunts in their lifetime to banish any doubts whatsoever in my mind, in particular they wield the law like a weapon - something Gates has never done.

They are two sides of the same coin. You can't dislike one but not the other, that's merely hypocrisy.

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[Enrique1218]

You can still buy Virtual PC 6 and not send your dollars to Microsoft. Though Microsoft bought it, Connectix will continue to sell until the transition is complete. So, there is still time to upgrade

Re:Microsoft owns this now

[liquidsin]

Last I bought VPC it came with a copy of Windows. So by purchasing VPC5 you already paid the Windows tax for a license.

hmm

[B3ryllium]

Does it come with a lightgun?

If I'm gonna play VirtuaPC, I need a lightgun so I can shoot all those stupid Windows applications ... and watch them recoil in 3D blocky splendour!

Woo! VirtuaFighter!

Erm, I mean, VirtuaPC. ;-)

So does it like *work* this time around?

[quantax]

About 4 months ago i tried setting up my friend's OSX titanium (no special hardware) up with VPC and windows 2000 (using the cd that comes w/ vpc). Without fail, it would blue-screen and then eventually cause OSX to kernel dump. After reinstalling vpc, windows 2000 several times and encountering the same results, I said screw it. My other friends who have tried the same have also said windows was impossible to get configured using VPC. So hopefully this time around, their software will work as advertised.

Re:So does it like *work* this time around?

[RocketScientist]

Hmm...I'm running VPC6 on my 667Mhz PB. Works like a champ. The only thing I need it for is Query Analyzer, and it works great for that.

Of course, I didn't have a problem with VPC5 either. I'm thinking you may have acquired some bad media?

Re:So does it like *work* this time around?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which version of VPC were you using? 5? or 6? 5 wasn't very good....VPC 6 is much better in many regards (not to mention it's 25% faster).

FWIW, configuring VPC to use Windows is hardly impossible. I've done it for 95, 98, NT, NT Server, 2K, among other things. It's usually a matter of following directions:

Insert CD. Read License Agreement. Click "OK." "Click 'Install.'"

...and so on. It's not rocket science.

Re:So does it like *work* this time around?

[DuckWing]

um, did you even READ the review? The reviewer is quite happy with the fact that it works better than VPC 5 and works well for his needs.

I don't know what planet you came from, but you might learn to read.

Powerbook G4

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have a Kyocera QCP 3035 cell phone. I am going to be on the road some this summer, so I wanted to use it as a modem for my PowerBook G4/867"

Re:Emulate, what ever...

[L0stb0Y]

For the record, I have a mac myself, so before the zealot wars begin, I'm going to go open Vi AND emacs on my MAC-in-the-box.

*yawn*

LosT

But it doesn't run my favorite application!

[callipygian-showsyst]

For some reason my favorite application, Partition Magic, doesn't run on it!

x86 emulation

[rf0]

Looking over the site it looks like a nice program but can it run other x86 Operating System like Linux or FreeBSD. It would just be nice to know as I'm thinking about a powerbook and would like to know my options. Of course I know OS-X is BSD based but just wondered about other flavours of *NIX

Rus

Re:x86 emulation

[david614]

Most pc-based operating systems can work on virtual pc. OS Packs are available with linux. Or, if you already own a distribution, just try an install after setting up a new install volume. Very simple, and documented on the virtual pc web site. D

Re:x86 emulation

[RocketScientist]

Before the buyout they used to sell a version that was boxed with RedHat. Pretty much any OS that you can install can be installed, it supports booting the virtual machine from a CD. Of course, some features may not work, like another poster pointed out about FreeBSD (Sound works, X doesn't).

Re:x86 emulation

[Billly Gates]

You can run easily run a powerpc native linux distro. VC is nice to run the occasional windows app or pc video game.

Try debian, gentoo, or if ease of use is important suse and yes mandrake. The only thing Powerpc linux can't do is good java support. I think java 1.1 is still in beta.

You can also use darwin or a rootless X server in MacosX and run unix apps that way. Apple is also working on running aqua and X apps side by side in the next version of MacOSX. Apple will introduce its own X server.

Re:x86 emulation

[bnenning]

The only thing Powerpc linux can't do is good java support. I think java 1.1 is still in beta.

It looks like 1.3.1 final is available here.

Apple is also working on running aqua and X apps side by side in the next version of MacOSX. Apple will introduce its own X server.

Done. Technically it's still beta, but it works great.

Re:MSN Tech Support SAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

brings back memories of when I used to worked outsourced phone support. good ol' half hour lunches, stupid callers, someone listening in and grading you, putting people on hold because I had to take a dump...can't imagine why i ever left

It seems

[L0stb0Y]

it seems Amazon beat you to the punch, they are already taking me to court.

Mac emulator for PC

[RolandGunslinger]

I should would like to know about this. I'm a Mac lover from way back, but I'm stuck in a Windows world. I'd love the opportuntity to run Mac emulation on Win XP! Anybody know anything about this?

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[FueledByRamen]

The main reason that I know of, preventing PPC on X86 emulation, is that PPC has so many more registers than X86. Most of them would have to be mapped to memory, instead of using on-CPU registers. This would slow down any program using lots of registers (all of them?) by a HUGE amount.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[greenrom]

The lack of registers on x86 shouldn't slow it down that much. Things that get accessed all the time (like PPC's registers) are going to stay in the on-chip cache where access is fast. Besides, when you write an emulator, you're doing a lot more than just writing something to translate an opcode for one processor into an opcode for another processor. There's a lot more to it than saying r12 = AX.

While I haven't seen the source, my guess is that Connectix just defines some chunk of memory for the x86 registers rather than trying to map them to a range of PPC registers. While it would be POSSIBLE for them to do this, it would be very messy to do in C or C++. You'd have to use special compiler options to keep the compiler from using those registers for other things, and your code would be littered with inline assembly. They could have written the whole thing in assembly language, but that's not too likely either. Realistically, they probably are just using a chunk of memory for the x86 registers and taking the 5% performance hit (or whatever the performance hit would be).

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... You're thinking of very primitive ansd slow emulator technology. A modern emulator (since early 1990's, at least) does dynamic binary recompilation, translating blocks of machine code to equivalent host machine code.

To crank the speed up, they optimize the resulting code... and they definitely do use host processor registers as much as possible. The recompiler itself would be written in C or C++, with most critical parts in assembly, but the recompiler directly handles machine code and higher-level representations of the code.

Given that VPC 5 was already doing dynamic binary recompilation, the reason VPC 6 is faster must be simply that they improved and tuned the optimizer. Note that dynamic binary recompilation is largely the same thing as the "code morphing" done by Transmeta firmware...

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a problem... it's a complication, but definitely solvable. What you do is basic register allocation, spilling less used registers to memory, all of which is well-known compiler technology. The Executor 68000 emulator did this in 1994. Any emulator that is not crawling does register remapping.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Nicolay77]

Then may be the new 64 bit processors will be able to emulate the PPC.

AMD could even consider that for a marketing campaign.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the whole 68K emulator industry has tried to solve this problem and haven't come up with anything acceptable yet.

Even with 2Ghz PCs that would only need to emulate at the speed of a ~300Mhz Mac to be be commercially acceptable.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Somethhing no one has mentioned is that the PPC is bi-endian. This means it can run in little endian or big.
Most (pretty much all) the programs for OS X are written for the big-endian.

The X86 is little endian, and can never be big-endian. This is why you will always have slow emulation.

Another way to look at is this:
The internet is big endian, every NIC card or proccessor that uses little endian must convert. Now think about how fast the fastest NIC cards are (10 Mb - 1 Gb). Now think about how fast the processor talks to ram and the cache (100 MB - 5 GB). Notice the conversion between bits and bytes, and you have a slow machine spending all its time switching bit order.

I think the compile flag is
gcc -lm-bigendian
But the mac I'm on write now does not have gcc, so i can't read the man page.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Compuser]

Your post got me to wondering: with dynamic binary
recompilation you are taking code written in
machine language and compiling it into another
machine's language. This is not much different
from taking code in a human-readable language
like C and compiling that. So why is there any
speed loss with this form of emulation, assuming
you don't do JIT compile things but precompile
all your binaries? And why do current emulators
still slow down with disk access?

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic reason is that when source code is transformed to machine code, too much high-level information is lost. The emulator ends up doing stuff like updating representations of processor flags (which of course would bear little resemblance to the processor flags of the host processor), checking for memory access aliasing, checking for self-modifying code etc. that take no time in a real processor, but which need to be done in a full emulator. In many cases a sufficiently smart emulator might be able to prove that some of the extra consistency work is unnecessary because the emulated program would not use the results anyhow, but that requires spending a lot of time in program analysis. An emulator has to do the binary recompilation relatively fast.

BUT with all that said, there's the HP Dynamo system which is an optimizing dynamic binary recompiler from PA-RISC to PA-RISC. That might sound pointless, but the catch is that they are able to speed up optimized binaries by up to 30% in some cases... The trick is that they optimize across function and library boundaries. It's an amazing proof-of-concept but compared to a true emulator, they have the advantage that they are "emulating" the host processor which allows a whole lot of simplifications.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to http://www.ardi.com/syn68k.php and believe. Oddly or not, despite techical excellence, ARDI does not seem to have been commercially successful, as there has been no updates for years.

Re:Mac emulator for PC

[Anonymous Coward]

The register problem is true, but x86 frequencies are outstripping PPC by such a large amount now that it won't matter anymore. The skanky x86 architecture at 3 GHz should be able to emulate a 1 GHz PPC just fine. Unless Moto/IBM can start to magically keep up with Intel, the architecture differences won't prevent good emulation.

Why wouldn't MS make this program worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

In an odd turn of face for me I think MS is probably going to keep this one on the level. If you're running VPC, there's a good chance you're going to shell out for a Windows OS license as well, meaning they win twice. Not only do they have you buying Windows for a Mac, but they also have you buying a Virtual PC to go with it.

Win win. What they might do is make it even MORE windows-centric. Right now it's very useful for non-windows OSes as well.

Re:Why wouldn't MS make this program worse?

[grantb]

That is a real worry, connectix was has already implemented the start dock icon, but MS could compleately shut out other os's in which case we would be relegated to using software such as box or other open source programs to emulate the x86

I installed Red Hat 8.0 on it last week

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Red Hat 8.0 on Virtual PC 6 last week. The linux GUI is very slow on my Dual 450MHz, but the command line works great. I can even ssh from the same mac (and from others in my network) to the "Virtual linux", so I just run Virtual PC with linux, minimize it, and use several of my terminals in my mac Terminal.app to log on to it. Its pretty cool.

I am using it to learn RAID on linux, and it is better than a real PC. I can create "virtual disks" and connected/disconnected at will, which is very convenient to simulate RAID configurations, failures, etc (on a real PC, I would have to open the box and connect/disconnec disks to simulate hardware failures...not big deal, but more incovenient).

I have also installed Win98 in it, to run Kazaa...and it is actually usable.

So, all in all, a pretty good product.

PD: I havent tried it yet with Verion 6, but I installed Solaris 6 x86 on Virtual PC 5. It ran OK as well.

Will it run Visual Studio.NET?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sometimes need to fire up VS.NET (boo!) and that's the only thing that's stopping me from buying a Powerbook. Anyone know if VPC supports VS.NET?

UNIX emulator

[AnimeRulez]

Why all the excitement over a Windoze emulator? Someone should start a free software project to emulate UNIX on Mac OS X. Now that would be a great addition! AR

Re:UNIX emulator

[grantb]

If you don't agree with the OSX being unix'ism then you can just as easy RUN unix on your mac, I am extremenly happy with my dual boot system. But if you still want to run unix will virtual pc is not only a windows emulator and you can just as easialy install linux.

Re:UNIX emulator

[AnimeRulez]

I am not familiar with the R.U.N. technology to which you refer and can only assume the "U" stand for UNIX. I suppose next you will say that because you have two boots and your Score: is one greater than mine you are somehow better than me. Well, I'll have you know that I will not bite on such an obvious troll. Thank you Sir and have a nice day. AR

Re:UNIX emulator

[grantb]

I don't think that i am better than anyone, such a complex is what leads to mass confrontation. On /. i am sure that you will find people which scores much higher than mine. As far as I am concerned everything on the internet is a level playing field. ;-)

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[runenfool]

Its very very difficult to directly compare performance between emulated and real systems. You can have one app that runs like its running on a P3-500, and another that runs like its on a 486. Its just the nature of emulation, it does some things better than others.

Anything requiring extensive disk access will tend to be slow, as well as anything video intensive. In my experience anyway.

If you are talking about buying a new Mac, and the Windows (obviously the Linux stuff has probably been ported to some degree) software you have isn't games or anything too intense, it should probably run great on a Powermac.

Re:The great mac irony

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yet here Mac users are.... struggling to emulate the lowly PC.

No, here are Mac users who need to run Windows for a few specific Win-only tasks, but who don't want to waste money or space on a second machine.

> Sigh... I'm so sick of Mac advocates that push it like a religion.

Then you must be no doubt sick of people who bash Macs religiously as well. Oh wait, of course your not. Ironic, that.

Warfract?

[WIAKywbfatw]

You have to go back as far as Warfract (I!)... to find a real time graphics game that plays fine.

Warfract? What's this? Is it like a custom version of Rescue On Fractalus for Dubya's personal use?

(Only kidding. I know you meant Warcraft but your post made me reminisce about a game (ROF not WC) that I hadn't even thought about in years.)

Re:Warfract?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Warfract is a pretty good name for a game. Synthesizes Warcraft, frag and faction in one word. No doubt if I used it I'd be sued by Blizzard.

Re: Hangs, freezes, and everything

[FlaSheridn]

> I had loads of trouble with version 5. Hangs, freezes, and everything.

I'm having them too with VPC 6 and XP Pro on OSX 10.2.4/G4Dp, as are a number of people in the Connectix support forum. Frequently even the Mac's menubar clock freezes for several seconds, something I've never seen before. On the other hand, given the lack of outrage here, perhaps I'm in the minority.

Clie program for Mac OS X

[gavbaa]

Check out Missing Sync (you can find a link to it on the Sony Clie website). According to my office friend who just got it for his Clie, it's the greatest sync program since sliced bread, and integrates with all the tasty Mac apps.

Re:Clie program for Mac OS X

[joeyspqr]

I've been using Missing Sync since getting my Clie (6 mos),
works great with either Palm for OS X or the iApps
(actual viewer testimony)

to hell with computers, I'm going surfing !!

Finally!

[psxndc]

700 mHz iBook with 384MB of RAM

This is what I have been waiting for: Someone to finally post a review with specs that _wasn't_ using a G4. I assume your 700 MHz iBook has the 16MB video? I'm asking because that's the machine I have and I've been on the fence about Virtual PC since 6 came out. When I tried VPC5 on a PowerMac in the Apple store, I thought it was completely unusable so I didn't even try running it on my iBook. I'm not looking to do much: Run Outlook, maybe Visual Studio.NET, and play Magic: Online. Obviously unless you're into all those things you can't give a real assessment, but overall you're happy with it? Thanks.

psnxdc

Re:Finally!

[afantee]

My iBook is 700 MHz / 16 MB VRAM / with 640 MB RAM, and Win 2000 is quite responsive and Win XP usable under VPC 6.0.1.

Re:Finally!

[psxndc]

You are my hero. That's exactly my machine. I'll go out and pick up VPC6 with DOS (already have a Win2k disc) tonight. Thanks a bunch!

psxndc

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[smagoun]

In my experience, VPC on a 1ghz powerbook runs at about the same speed as a 500mhz PIII with really slow disk and graphics subsystems. Unfortunately the disk + graphics systems put a damper on overall performance. The CPU emulation itself is quite fast, however. Depending on exactly what you're doing, it ranges from about .4x to .75x the speed of host's processor. On one of the new 1.42ghz towers, I'd expect to see CPU performance roughly equal to a 750mhz PIII.

No thanks!

[feldsteins]

I for one don't want VPC to have accelerated 3D video. Follow my logic. VPC gets accelerated video. Game start to be playable on it (not fast, but playable). Mac users start buying Windows games that didn't get ported to Mac OS proper. Game developers start saying "hey, why bother doing an expensive port when we are already selling them the Windows version?"

And that leads to the end of the Mac game market. All you have left is emulation. Like Linux. And for the record, Linux is in quite a corner, too. It's primarily because all Linux people who care about games are dual booting Windows. So developers are asking themselves why they should port to Linux when they're already selling them the Windows version. Answer: they have no reason to.

Re:No thanks!

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"the end of the Mac game market."

You can only play photoshop so many times before it gets boring.

useful for tech support

[TechStuff.ca]

VirtualPC is very useful in a HelpDesk environment. You can have multiple versions of Windows (and other OSes) running at once, to easily support people on multiple platforms without rebooting your own machine.

You can have one environment in which a particular Windows Update patch or security update has been installed, and another that hasn't, and easily switch between them.

You can even set up environments with specific software combinations. ("So, you're running WordPerfect 11 with Internet Explorer 5.5 and QuickTime 6? Just a sec. Okay, let's see if we can duplicate that error...")

VPC lets you test viruses, spyware and other dangerous software without risk. You just make a backup of the virtual drive before trying something risky, in case you need to go back to the previous version.

VPC isn't for everyone, but it's very useful for some.

Sandy

Re:useful for tech support

[pudge]

VPC lets you test viruses, spyware and other dangerous software without risk. You just make a backup of the virtual drive before trying something risky, in case you need to go back to the previous version.

Good point ... I've done this more than once.

Re:The great mac irony

[truenoir]

You dissin' the Media Access Control addresses? We need those to keep packets goin' where they ought. Or perhaps you don't realize that Mac is short for Macintosh, and so isn't all caps? ^_^

Re:Emulate, what ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, I have a mac myself,

Soooo what? Does that mean you can't troll?

so before the zealot wars begin, I'm going to go open Vi AND emacs on my MAC-in-the-box.

You would save time an ram using the vi mode in emacs.

*yawn*

Now that you're up, take a shower and try another post.

LosT

Not completely, you do have a Mac.

Re:The great mac irony

[macthulhu]

Without resorting to "bashing" anyone... From time to time, running a Windows-Only app is a necessary evil. It's silly to buy another machine if you don't have frequent use for it. I am a Mac advocate because, as a tool, it does everything I need it to. In the rare event that it doesn't, emulation can ease the pain. That's really all there is to the discussion. So, how is it offensive to you that one platform can run both kinds of software, and the other can not? Seems pretty simple to me... Sounds to me like you have a big chip on your shoulder about your choice of platforms. Do you buy the hype that Macs are more "hip"? Are you bummed that Macs have "cooler" cases? Are you steamed because you don't have a positive enough experience with your OS that you would "religiously" defend it? Get over it. If you don't like Macs, nobody really gives a shit... Especially when you post as AC and bring nothing of substance to the discussion.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[jaoswald]

Actually, I would think that disk access tends to *equalize* emulators with real hardware. After all, your disk access is probably limited by disk latency and bandwidth, and the hard disk on your emulating machine shouldn't be that much slower than the real thing. Furthermore, the data from the hard disk is not going to need much translation between platforms.

What would kill speed is a task where the real processor to be able to execute with code and data both in cache. The emulated processor has to fit the relevant emulator code, emulated processor state, JIT-compiled emulated code, and the program data all in the host machine cache to have any chance at all of keeping up. [Note that Connectix requires L3 cache on the Mac to get the advertised speed improvements.] Even then, the inner loop of JIT-compiled code is probably not as optimized as an inner loop that makes heavy use of processor-specific quirks.

Video speed depends on how well the emulator maps the video calls to hardware on the emulating machine. Virtual PC does not do that for 3D.

Re:The great mac irony

[L0stb0Y]

Hehheeh the all caps was for STRONG LANGUAGE, as in MAC! vs mac. ;) you know, like the BIG white apple stickers on cars, vs the little ity bitty colored apple stickers...

hehehe

What a Friday. Gotta love it. Userfriendly here I come.

Apps that I need!!

[lp_bugman]

Magellan StreetMaps, Dellorme XMap this two to use with my Palm. And I run on the background a MS-SQL Server for my development environment. There are other realy good apps like qImage that only run on Windows. And don't have any real replasement.

c-a-r-t-e-l?

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm. with apple you get the hardware built for the software built for the hardware, and you have to go to the one corporation for support for both. if there's an abusive business model anywhere on the proprietary OS landscape, the Apple Cartel is it. at least with MS you can buy from any of a gazillion hardware manufacturers. with apple hardware you pay ex rectum, usually 100% or more over equivalent x86 hardware. you pay into the massive apple advertising fund... you pay to support apple's co-opting of every high school computer lab across the country. and then they make you buy their operating system on top of it! now THAT's an abusive business practice!

Using VPC for browser testing

[artemis67]

VPC is useful for testing code in various browsers, but it's not a reliable test for colors. PC's are notorious for having a darker gamma than Macs, but VPC doesn't adjust for this. For web designers on Macs, there's still no substitute for having a PC box in close proximity.

Re:Using VPC for browser testing

[marcsiry]

For web designers on Macs, there's still no substitute for having a PC box in close proximity.

...except for setting your Mac screen gamma to PC standard (2.2) like I do :-)

That said, VPC is very helpful for seeing what all the different Windows interface widgets do to your layout- the controls look, act, and size quite differently and can negatively affect the design of your sites.

Re:Using VPC for browser testing

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I spose it depends how dedicated tester you are aswell. If you want to test older verisons of IE, you'll have to dual boot, or have serveral boxes. Which is a pain in the ass. Much easier to have VPC, even if you can't run them all that the same time.

my mouth is hanging open

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know any anti-MS Mac zealots. [...] The Mac community isn't really a good place to find zealotry.

I thought I had this problem licked. I got through a whole weekend of Elizabeth Smart coverage without rolling my eyes, but this takes the cake. Time to get the windlass out and crank my cynicism up a few more orders of magnitude.

Re:VPC 6 & FreeBSD - Sound, yes; X, no; clock,

[Anonymous Coward]

X runs fine in FreeBSD when using VPC under Windows.

In fact, I have well over 7 OSes installed as guest systems in VPC and _not a single problem_ with any of them.

Can't comment about MAC ;) I can't run it on VPC under Windows. Is this fair?

For those with real PCs already....

[greasypeso]

Microsoft has a Remote Desktop Client for OS X. If you're running WinXP, or Windows 2000 Server, you can access it directly from your Mac desktop. A great solution if you don't want to buy a virtual PC in addition to your real PC.

http://www.microsoft.com/Mac/DOWNLOAD/MISC/RDC.a sp

Main new features

[madsenj37]

One of teh main new features that make a difference in VPC 6 over other versions is the use of teh L3 cache. Only certain models of the G4 have this ... those who dont will only get the other feature benefits ... perhaps the author did not have one ... anyways I am waiting to test it out myself.

Secondly I doubt that microsoft will stop making VPC or make it worse. they do sell a copy of windows with it. The true worry is that you may be forced to buy teh most up to date versions of XP only or microsoft OSes only.

speed

[Anonymous Coward]

What's amazing is that people keep investing in this program and it runs programs so much slower than a $199 wal-mart PC even on the fastes DP machine.
In fact, I didn't even see a difference running it on a DP machine vs. a single processor mac.
What a piece of trash.
Give it a rest, if you want a PC, get a PC.

Cygwin

[nojomofo]

I updated Cygwin ..., which I use occasionally....

That's messed up.... Cygwin on a Windows emulator on a Mac.... Joking aside, why cygwin? Why not just Mac OSX terminal?

Re:Cygwin

[pudge]

Because when I am testing ActivePerl for Windows, the last thing I want to do is use the DOS Shell. :) It is certainly not for doing real work, just for making it easier to get around for testing.

GTA on Mac

[BancBoy]

GTA, The London Expansion pack and GTA2 (for PlayStation) will run just fine on a Mac under Connectix VGS (yes, you have to boot into 9, but who cares?).

3D != games

[smagoun]

What about programs that require OpenGL or Direct3D that aren't games? There are plenty of CAD, modelling, visualization, etc packages out there that use 3D graphics but aren't games. Furthermore, many of these programs are low-volume or custom programs that have no chance of being ported to the Mac. Better 3D support in VPC for these programs would do nothing but *help* people.

About the game market....does it really matter if there's a mac game market, if Windows games work just fine? Instead of late/non-existent/half-assed/broken/etc ports, Mac users would be able to run new games right when they came out. I bet they'd even be compatible with their PC counterparts, so people playing (say) Everquest wouldn't have to use Mac-only servers. That would be a *good* thing IMHO.

(FWIW, many games today require so much horsepower that emulation - even with 3D acceleration - simply wouldn't be feasible, so a port would be the only viable option for playing on the Mac anyway. That should keep the Mac game market up + running).

Re:3D != games

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad Mac ports are the result of lazy development. Period. There is no good technical reason that EQ has to be Mac only. Diablo (and every other Blizzard game, for that matter) works seamlessly on mixed servers. So does the original Unreal & Unreal Tournament. Games can actually get better in the porting process (Giants was re-written to use multiple processors, and for some reason Wolfenstein never looks as good on a PC as it does on a Mac). So I'll play my Mac games on a real Mac, thanks. And if there are so many I can't play, I'll just get a console. Then I KNOW I'll be able to play anything.

No X-Box?

[realmolo]

So, no X-Box because Microsoft is EVIL, right?

I assume that you also aren't purchasing anything from Wal-Mart, don't buy Nike shoes or products of any kind, and drive a solar-powered vehicle so the terrorists don't get any of your money for oil?

You're a fucking idiot.

Re:No X-Box?

[JudgeFurious]

You haven't the first clue about whether I'm a "fucking idiot" or not. I doubt very seriously that any company is perfect. I'm certain that many of them have some things they wouldn't want aired out in the press. I don't do business with Microsoft because they have been convicted of doing a number of things that are illegal and I think their overall strategy is not good for the industry as a whole. I don't spend my money on anything that Disney produces because they seem to feel that their cartoon rat and it's associated copyright is more important than letting any number of other works enter the public domain. In this world one of the few ways you can actually voice your disapproval of a corporations behaviour is with your money.

I don't buy anything from Wal-Mart because frankly I prefer to shop at Target. In my area it's a better store IMO. I don't buy things from Nike because I couldn't care less what some guy who plays basketball for a living wears and I think their shoes are overpriced.

You don't know enough about me to make the assertion that I'm a "fucking idiot". I on the other hand can safely say that you are rude and ignorant. This you have clearly demonstrated.

Re:No X-Box?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a silly comment. It is perfectly appropriate and often very reasonable to spend your money with firms whose actions you support, and to withhold it from those who, for whatever reason, you disapprove of. As long as you hold true to your principles, you are accomplishing something.

I, for one, have never spent a penny in Wal-Mart. I would happily pay more to support my local businesses. This practice may not hurt Wal-Mart, but it will help these local competitors to survive against it.

And as for your solar-powered vehicle comment (hyperbole, I assume), while the proposed war is certainly about more than oil, it is nevertheless impossible to ignore the fact that our overreliance on oil (in the US), affects policy decisions in the Middle East. To the extent that this is addressed by consumers, we all benefit. That, incidentally, is a true "conservative" position (and the Democrat one), but quite different from the 'do whatever you want; we'll take care of it' position advocated by the current Republican administration.

Individuals matter. And, by the way, so does politeness.

AC

Re:No X-Box?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought my Microsoft SUV from Wal-Mart...

Re:The great mac irony

[Solosoft]

Every type of computer and every type of OS has it's own use. Example, you wouldn't go and buy an ultra gaming machine and put on Linux (yeah yeah you could and yeah yeah you can run games) but Windows has more games. I see Windows as only a Gaming OS ... Kinda like Commodore, c'mon who here actually used it for things other then connecting to usenet servers with there 8bps USR modem and pirating games. Macs seem to be moving towards the practical internet use. Kinda like linux ... but with more corporate support. (word etc etc). Well ... my opinion ...

PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[eyefish]

PC prices are so cheap nowdays, that I'm wondering how come no company has come up with a "PC on a PCI card" which you can drop into a mac, and use as a normal PC instead of emulating it...

Whoever does this just needs to make sure to allow the mac user to keep using the same keyboard, mouse, ethernet, hard drive (a partition for the PC or some form of file sharing), and USB ports, and if possible to loop-back the PC video signal to display it into a window inside the Mac via some kind of utility. after that, it'd be a good hack to allow cut-copy-paste between the two environments (easy to program using a simple socket-based cut-copy-paste driver on the PC and Mac side).

And remember, all a user needs for basic tasks is a simple 1Ghz celeron or athlon, 128 or 256 MB RAM, and an 8/16/32 MB video chipset. Something like this could be easily be sold for $300 dollars, and my guess is that it'd sell like hot cakes. The only challenge when you think about it is the software I described above, and even then there are ways to simplify things, like requiring the user to buy a dedicated hard drive for the PC side (about 60 bucks for 30GB).

So, any takers???

Side note: There was something like this once made for the Commodore Amiga 2000, but at the time it was a rather slow 80286 if I recall correctly.

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[MagusX]

I don't know if they still make them, but for the longest time you could buy such a card. Orange Micro used to make such a line of card, known as OrangePC. They wern't terribly popular. I know for a while you could buy PowerMacs with PC cards preinstalled, usually leading to a 'PC' after the model number, such as the 7300/180 PC that has a 166Mhz Pentium in addition to it's 180Mhz PowerPC chip.

I have no idea if anyone makes products like this for modern Macs.

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Erwos]

They made that sort of thing for Macs back in the 680X0 days. I have no idea if they were popular or worked well - probably not, since they seem to be gone now. Essentially, they were as you described - a PC motherboard on a PCI card. But by the same token, couldn't you do the same thing with the G3 or G4 for the PC?

I see a few issues doing this now, though:
1. Powering it would be tough nowadays. Not only would cooling be tricky, but the power consumption would require a huge power supply. Possible to get by it with a passively-cooled chip like the C3.
2. Bandwidth - PCI is bandwidth limited, only 512mb a second IIRC, and that's got to be shared with all peripherals. If you made an AGP version, that might work, but where would you put your graphics card?
3. Size - mobos are big things, and there's only so far you can cut them to. We'd probably be talking a single DIMM slot, a CPU socket, and a couple SATA channels onboard the card, along with VGA-out and maybe some sort of sound pass-through. This is probably acceptable for the most part, but it's not going to make for much of a PC or Mac.
4. Hardware - Mac and PC hardware is becoming more and more compatible, but sharing peripherals between two operating systems simultaneously is going to be extremely tricky.

So, yes, the idea is good and has been done before, but I'm not sure how feasible it is this very moment.

-Erwos

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

A company called orangemicro used to make pc cards for the macintosh performa (6xxx series i think) origionally for nubus macs, and later for pci. They made them with I know there were 486 and pentium versions i think there were 286 and pentium II's , the orange pc cards are discontinued and no longer supported, but drive updates and manuals are still availible now they make firewire, usb, and scsi cards, and web cams

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Jhan]

PC prices are so cheap nowdays, that I'm wondering how come no company has come up with a "PC on a PCI card" which you can drop into a mac, and use as a normal PC instead of emulating it...

Like this (search for Houdini)? There were also (as you mention) the various Janus Bridgeboards for the Amigas. The fastest was a '486dx66, I think. There was even a A500 '286 card that connected to the memory expansion slot (!) at the bottom of the computer. With glorious Herkules graphics.

In other words, it has been tried. These card all had some things in common:

• Being at least one processor generation behind the PC.
• Costing about the same as an equivalent PC, despite being only glorified motherboards.

This concept could work, but only when there is a high volume PC motherboard form factor that's smaller than a PCI (or whatever we're using then) card. Then you can make a PCI-shaped 'glue' kit that plugs into the motherboards various connectors and fits into a PCI slot in another system.

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Well, Sun sells these sort of things for their workstations...see Sun PCi PC support cards, IIRC.
I agree...Apple should too...

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[geekoid]

"Being at least one processor generation behind the PC."

does that matter anymore? so it runs at an incredible slow 2GHz. I can see where it was an issue in the 486 days.

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[PoorCoder]

I don't see any problem with that. If you look at notebook parts, they are tiny and run on less power. I would prefer this PC board to have its own RAM and HDD (less bandwidth issue). It can be done, but how many Mac users would go for it?

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Sycraft-fu]

The point is, for teh price you can buy a better PC. The Orange Micro cards aht did this were just stupid. You'd literally pay MORE for the privledge of having a PC in your Mac. Why? If you want a PC and are willing to pay for the hardware, get the hardware. VPC for the Mac is mainly for thsoe peopel that have an app or two that they can't live without that is Windows only. If you have need for the power offered by native PC hardware, go buy some. It is plentful and cheap. It would cost more for a company to whack it on a PCI card, and you'd get less expandability.

Re:PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Dioji]

It would probably be feasible to put only an x86 CPU on a card. It certainly won't do much by itself, but it could bring speedups to VPC.

real virtual pc software

[Sarin]

I use bochs on my mac which runs linux.
It emulates the x86 processor and hardware so you can not only run windows but also other x86 operating systems and it's free. Here are some screenshots .
It's not that fast on my 400mhz powerbook though. But it works fluently.

Re:real virtual pc software

[ymgve]

I don't understand why you feel Bochs is more 'real' than VirtualPC. They both support almost all of the operating systems you can find under the sun (for the PC, that is) and the only difference between them is that VirtualPC is non-free and are quite a bit faster.

Re:real virtual pc software

[anarkhos]

You forgot to mention that Bochs sucks

Iwill not pay to "upgrade" when it's more a "fix"

[claud9999]

Having bought a G4 a while ago and bought VPC 5, I found it useful but it was slow and buggy and lacked some features I came to expect from the s/w. Posts on the Connectix VPC site mentioned complete incompatability problems with 5.0.4 and 10.2. Connectix never spoke a word about fixes, then released VPC 6 with their upgrade costing the full price of VPC 6 with PC-DOS. Not what I'd call discount pricing for the upgrade...And now 5.0.X is no longer even listed in their product downloads page.

From what I can tell, 6 doesn't add any new features, it just fixes bugs...IMHO should have been a 5.1 release.

I'll continue to boycott 6.0 and continue to use 5.X only when necessary (infrequently.) This sort of crappy upgrade strategy makes piracy a more tempting option, let me tell you!

Personally, I'm glad Connectix got bought out by MS and hope they get sacked, and perhaps the Open Source community [Bochs] will come to the rescue.

Or perhaps VMWare will see an opportunity (assuming they change their painful pricing model.) Heck, maybe Apple will get into the business!

Ad-vatorial review plant story - needs disclaimer

[Anonymous Coward]

please put a disclaimer that this is an ad for anti-ms software

Can your strawman bullshit, fool.

[MohammedNiyalSayeed]

I suppose if you can't see the need for running the product, then it certainly must not have any use, eh? Did you read any of the other comments? Perhaps the original review, wherein the notion of testing for other platforms was mentioned as the SOLE REASON D'ETRE for needing VPC?

"In true honesty" [sic], you obviously have a lot of misconceptions about Mac users' anti-MS bias. It's you dirty socialist fat nerds who have the attitude problem where Microsoft is concerned, usually due to the fact you can't control your workplace environment, and thusly are forced to deal with Microsoft products. Too fucking bad. Maybe you should have got yourself one of them thar' college degrees and gotten yourself a real job where you get to pick your desktop operating environment. I haven't used Windows of any variety in over 5 years, and I love life. Not a minute goes by during the day in which I DON'T think about Microsoft, either positively or negatively.

And you might want to can the pedestrian analysis of alleged closed door meetings that killed non-existant projects. It makes you look like the fool that you truly are, as does your insipid hatred of Capitalism. Capitalism owns you, bitch. Now go pay your rent!

Re:Can your strawman bullshit, fool.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were a fucking jew.

Go to sleep. You can fight with your keyboard some other day.

Re:Can your strawman bullshit, fool.

[MohammedNiyalSayeed]

Right, like you know any better. Ha!

I'm the fucking jew that's going to fill your house with concrete, you anonymous cunt.

Re:Can your strawman bullshit, fool.

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently, irony is lost on you.

Re:Can your strawman bullshit, fool.

[MohammedNiyalSayeed]

Um, yeah. Much unlike courage is lost on you, bitch.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[Alan Partridge]

yeah, we could also stand around all day flapping our arms to see if we can learn to fly, it would have about as much fucking point to it.

Re:VPC 6 & FreeBSD - Sound, yes; X, no; clock,

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, the fix is to run VMware on a nice x86 machine.

Works great. I use Linux as my primary OS and develop in Windows and various other OS's (FreeBSD included) in VMware. It's super fast even on my laptop.

Macintosh Enterprise Email

[lysium]

That's the most useful application of this application that I can think of at the moment. VPC 6 running windows and outlook allows Macintoshs running OSX to connect to Exchange servers. This is one of the major holdbacks to OSX at the moment, especially in larger and/or more timid companies. Most are not willing to upgrade half of their infrastructure for the benefit of a few dozen client machines. Until there is a *serious* email application for OSX, VPC 6 is the best way to go.

Re:Macintosh Enterprise Email

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a version of Outlook for Mac. It runs in classic however it works fine for me. You can get it from http://www.microsoft.com/mac as a free download.

Re:Macintosh Enterprise Email

[unih20]

Full exchange support for Entourage in Office v.x is expected in the next couple months. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/Feb0 3/02-11ExchangeSolutionPR.asp

Still missing the two GREAT features

[gerardrj]

1. Getting rid of the Windows desktop all together. I REALLY look forward to the day when VPC can go rootless like an X windows server can and the Windows apps appear directly on the Mac desktop.
In eccessence VPC would be just another code execution path just like CoCoa(yellow box), Carbon and Classic(blue box). Maybe the VPC emulator would be called "bigblue box".
This would eliminate many of the system redundancies of running a fully isolated emulator (like mainatining two system clocks, device configurations, display spaces, etc) and dramatically speed things up.

2. Code optimization and restructuring. There was an app/addition to Windows for Alpha (iX32 I think)that would do this. It would look through all your executable 16/32bit X36 code one the machine and pre-optimize it and create a cache of native code that would run on the 64bit Alpha. Given today's HD space and the Mac's concept of "packages", this daemon on the Mac could periodically scan for new Windows apps, and re-write the core portions of them to run natively on PPC, making system calls in to the appropriate VPC section of OS X.

The article's writer ponders the end of Office for Mac. With these two features, there's a distinct possibility that would become reality. MS would simply bundle the VPC emulation "box" along with the Office installer, or any other software you purchase from them.

Re:Still missing the two GREAT features

[IamTheRealMike]

1. Getting rid of the Windows desktop all together. I REALLY look forward to the day when VPC can go rootless like an X windows server can and the Windows apps appear directly on the Mac desktop.

That'd be really hard, I can't think of a good way of doing that, short of running some kind of server on the copy of Windows inside VPC that hooked deep into the kernel, then used something like VNC to export individual windows over the loopback. It'd almost certainly be a huge huge hack, if it happened.

That's the problem with this style of emulation. You get very little integration with the host environment. And of course, you need to buy Windows.

Re:Still missing the two GREAT features

[Sycraft-fu]

That can't happen. See all the APIs on the Mac are all for the PPC. They may be different ways of talking to the OS, but they all speak the same language. All Windows apps are TOTALLY different. Not only are they for a different API (Win32), they are for a different processor and system model. So you must emulate all that lower level stuff, hence VPC.

Re:Still missing the two GREAT features

[Anonymous Coward]

No it wouldn't be hard. Think about it. Windows uses "explorer.exe" as its shell. If you don't run a shell and you boot up Windows all you get is a blank screen. Ctrl-alt-del still brings up the task manager, and you can start apps from there. Now the way i would see this working is a bit hackish, but certainly possible. After your Windows Start Menu is copied to the dock, you start an app, and that message is sent to a service running on the Windows "box" that automatically spawns that app and returns the window size. Then Virtual PC resizes the "root" to be the same size as the application you just spawned. Alternatively you could have a maximized desktop, but by tracking everywhere where a Windows window was currently located you could make every part of the desktop NOT covered by a window trasparent... and (not sure if OS X lets you do this, but Windows does) dynamically make that part of the application "click-throughable", so instead of your click landing on the window it would transfer through underneath. Yes it's a bit hackish, but it'd certainly be doable. All you need is that service running under Windows that tracks the locations of all the windows and notifies Virtual PC. No big deal - there are plenty of cheesy little applications you can download for Windows that track where all your windows are.

Re:Still missing the two GREAT features

[gerardrj]

I think You're confusing APIs with target processor. The APIs can be written for any computer in any language. The whole point of an API is that you don't care what's in the middle. you get to treat it as a black box. You know you put in X and get out Y. For example, a ficticicious "create window" API. The app just needs to know what the API expects from it, in this case let's say, location, size and color of the new window to draw (overly simple I know). When the app asks the OS to call that API, the app doesn't know what CPU that API will execute on, what language it was written in, or anything else. Likewise, the API doesn't care who called it or how; as long as it gets the proper parameters it will draw a new window on the screen.

When you double-clicked a windows app sitting on your machine, OS X know the app was not a Coco or Caarbon or Classic app and would pass the x86 code through an x86/PPC translator for execution on the PPC just like VPC does now(or this could be done in advance like I said). System calls within that code would be identified and passed on to the native PPC Windows APIs within the box. The windows apps would never run any native OS X APIs, they have no way of knowing such APIs exist. If there where no native.

Simply... instead of the BigBlueBox emulating only the machine, the box emulates the OS partially and the machine partially, and as such can take advantage of more features of the host OS and CPU. For example, the "create window" mentioned above would simply take the Windows parameters and translate them to what the Mac's "create window" one expects, and then call the CoCoa API to create the window. It would be MUCH faster than what we've got now.

This is what those extensions are that OS X places in your OS 9 System Folder. The inits replace OS 9's APIs with translators that simply re-direct the calls to the OS X native versions. The OS 9 apps have no idea that happens.

The version of Yahtzee that I just ran was compiled in 1987 from Pascal. It has no idea what Carbon or Cocoa are, yet via API interception and redirection the app runs fine. through at least two levels of emulation (OS X to classic and PPC to 68K).
Replace 68K with x86 and classic with Windows and you'll see this is VERY possible to do. In fact, it's being done now. :)

Games.

[BrookHarty]

Does anyone know how Counterstrike runs under VP6? Would be nice to see someone test/benchmark games on VP6.

Re:Games.

[ymgve]

VirtualPC doesn't support 3D acceleration, so that rules out most new games. Older games will probably work better, but from what I've seen on the PC version, the VGA emulation seems to be the slowest part of the whole emulator. So your best bet is non-accelerated Windows games that are quite a bit old..

Re:Games.

[BrookHarty]

Mostly wondering about Counterstrike. Wonder if Condition Zero (CS2) is going to have a mac port.

Re:Games.

[ymgve]

I didn't try counterstrike, but experimented with installing Half-Life itself on VirtualPC. It ran unexpectedly well in 640x480 software mode, so it might be worth a try. Still, this was on VirtualPC for PC, not for mac, so there could be some speed differences.

Specs:
VirtualPC 5.1 for Windows
Windows 98SE as guest OS with 96mb RAM
Host was Windows 2000 on a 1,3 GHz Celeron with 384mb SDR RAM

I love VPC6

[nettdata]

I actually went out and bought version 5. While it WORKED, I was somewhat disappointed in it's performace (specifically, the lack thereof). The mouse was SLOW, disk access was REALLY slow (a samba share to the OS X box was the best way to achieve reasonable disk access), etc. It was PAINFULL.

Enter the VPC 6 upgrade.

WOW.

Let me say that again...

WOW!

Now, to put it into perspective, I have a TiBook 800 with a Gig of RAM. I'm CTO of a software development company (Intellinger), and we develop performance monitoring software. Our entire shop uses OSX for our development (Java). We need to test and demo our product on/with Win32 OS's.

We use VPC for demos as well as testing on different platforms.

VPC6 boots faster on my TiBook than it does on my 2 year old Toshiba Satelite Pro. The mouse is THERE, if you know what I mean... no more "VNC" like responses, and the local folder sharing RULES.

I personally use it for a number of things...

Demos: We pull into a (potential) client site with our OSX laptops, launch our app on OSX, and then fire up VPC with the appropriate Win32 or Linux OS, and proceed to run our app against it. VPC allows the Win32/Linux session to look (over the network) like a totally separate machine. (VPC allows NAT-like network access or a totally independent IP address/access). The clients are totally amazed, and for the most part we have to keep them focused on our app and "stop asking questions about VPC!". The resounding feedback from the techies we present to is "wow... that's COOL! What are you selling again?".

Testing: We have a dual processor OSX box, running VPC, with 23 separate installations of different Win32 and Linux installs in various stages of configurations. We've found that this works amazingly well in testing installation, configuration, and operation issues. We can duplicate an entire configuration, do what we want with it, and then blow it away when we're done. Disposable installs. Way cool.

Visio: Omnigraffle is a great program for OSX, but it still is lacking the serious "stencil" support that Visio has when it comes to designing co-lo racks, etc. As well, most of the network techs I know still use Visio for the most part, so I need to be able to exchange Visio docs with them. I run Visio in VPC when I have to, and it feels "natural", native, whatever you want to call it. Awesome response.

Adobe Acrobat: Acrobat support SUCKS for OSX. (Adobe, you listening? Get your shit together!). I do a lot of reports in Word, and the PDFMaker macro in the Win32 version of Acrobat is amazing... it creates a really nicely formatted PDF document with the nice bookmarks, etc. That just doesn't exist in the OSX world. (If someone knows how to do this, PLEASE let me know!). So, to get around this, I have acrobat/Word installed on VPC, so when I have to generate the final docs, I use it to generate the output.

TOAD: I do a lot of Oracle development, and have yet to find a replacement for TOAD. It doesn't run in OSX. But it runs VERY well in VPC. The only issue is trying to find a minimal sql*net client install without installing / unzipping a DB install. Joy. That being said, I can launch VPC with Win98, create a port-forwarded SSH session to a remote Oracle box, and do anything I have to with TOAD. For that matter, I can also use TOAD in VPC to develop against the Oracle 9i DB running in OSX on the same box.

Those are just some of my experiences, and that's not to say that everything is golden...

There are the occasional freezes, usually the result of me using LiteSwitch X to switch between apps too quickly while it's working away on something, and there are some "weird" errors that pop up (every time I close TOAD, for instance, I always get a "illegal operation" error pop up). But you know, that's the minority of the time... the exception rather than the rule.

I highly recommend VPC6 for that "last mile" when moving from Win32 to OSX.

Re:I love VPC6

[Anonymous Coward]

I honest to goodness don't get what you mean about Acrobat on OS X. It works exactly like it did on OS 9. Either make PostScript output, drag it to Distiller, and work like usual, or print to the virtual Distiller printer. A third option, not available on any other OS, is simply to hit Print, then "Save as PDF," then use the other tools to add bookmarks. What isn't working for you specifically?

Re:I love VPC6

[nettdata]

I used to use Word on Windows, and the Acrobat install came with the PDFMaker macro that installed into Word. When you ran it, all of the headings, etc., would be incorporated into the document as PDF bookmarks. (for example, take a look at this documentation).

That functionality is not available with the OSX version.

As well, it was my impression that the Distiller only runs under Classic, not OSX. (Everything I've read says so, but I'm more than happy to be proven wrong! PLEASE tell me I'm wrong!)

True, you can save as PDF, but it also doesn't provide the Bookmarks.

All in all, I find that the Acrobat experience on OS X is not the same as it was on Win32 or OS 9, and is full of "not there yet's" and "doesn't support that yet".

Now, I could be wrong, but I like to think I'm a pretty smart guy, and have invested a fair bit of time trying to get this to work the way I need it to, and I haven't found a solution. TOTALLY OFF-TOPIC, if someone has any pointers/advice, I'd love to hear it!

Re:I love VPC6

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think this is slow and buggy, you really should try VMWare, the buggiest and slowest PC emulator on earth. So crappy I wonder why people would buy it, although they are real morons.

Re:I love VPC6

[david-bo]

Use Framemaker rather than Word. Still a Classic app, but everything else with it rules over Word. You save your documents as pdf with all bookmars etc included.

Re:I love VPC6

[nettdata]

Thanks... I'd love to, but no Classic.

VPC speed

[iotaborg]

In my experience, VPC has some interesting speed issues. I'm on a G4 Dual 1250, with VPC 6 with Win2000. In my experience, VPC can emualte x86 basic instructions very fast, for example running an RC5 test will give me ~3MKeys/s in VPC, which is very comparable to current low end PCs (in OS X I get 25+MKeys/s ;) ).

The problem, however, is in the graphics. Graphics are simply too slow, and it doesn't have good DirectX support either. It emulates an S3 graphics card... I hope Microsoft fixes this issue in the next verion of VPC, because processor emulation is fast, UI and graphics are slow.

I smell a shill.

[Erris]

What could be better? I think MS would be crazy to kill it off. So that leaves only better support for the product and smoother operation (we hope) ... Macs and Windows will finally start to get along.

Right. Isn't that what Corel and SCO thought of their M$ cash infusions? They get along fine now. No more competing word processor or comercial OS for Intel. So smooth without competition.

Connectix made enough money

[Gorimek]

The issue is not whether M$ makes enough money on it that it affects the overall finances of the comapny. Hardly anything they do meets that criteria.

The issue is if it makes money for them. VPC clearly made money for Connectix when they owned it to justify the expense of developing it, and it will by necessity make more money for M$. So from that perspective it seems like a nobrainer.

If there is some strategic over riding goal that is served by cancelling the product, they will do that anyway, of course. But I can't see what that would be, other than possibly trying to hurt Apple for some reason. Killing Office would be much more effective to reach that goal though.

The real danger may be if the developers quit. You can't just find that skill on the street.

x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they release osX for x86 already. No one wants to pay for their shitty hardware.

Re:x86

[Anonymous Coward]

my imac can beat up your dell

application?

[Erris]

2) Because transferring data between Macs and PCs, despite Mac OS X, can still be a pain. VPC makes it easy to read files without great pains if you have the software.

That's true for any OS and M$, and that's why I don't run M$. Why do you run M$?

3) Because some people need an environment where they can test matters without forking over additional cash.

You are shitting me? This cheaper than having an ugly M$ box?

4) Cables suck. KVMs work, but suck. Multiple keyboards suck. Multiple anything with computers generally suck.

That's why God created X and SSH. Six boxes, one keyboard, one mouse, no problems. Wanna play some Quake?

Re:application?

[MoneyT]

That's true for any OS and M$, and that's why I don't run M$. Why do you run M$?

Because sometime's your clients only use windows. I once had a person who was on a mac at a library ask me how to browse the web (he had netscape open) when I aksed him if he had ever done this before, he said yes, but he used windows, and he junt knew that macs were different. People can be dumb.

You are shitting me? This cheaper than having an ugly M$ box?

IIRC, you shell out about $150 - $200 for a copy of VPC, so yes, it is cheaper (or at least on par with) an ugly M$ box. Not to mention, when it comes time to do the montly reinstall, compy cut and paste the immage from the install CD

Re:Windows NT on PPC

[TheAncientHacker]

Windows NT for PPC was going to be built for the common architecture that IBM and Apple were going to develop (they did the PREP and CHRP specs together) as part of their new alliance. Unfortunately Apple and IBM got into a pissing war and never could agree on a platform. There were huge fights over whether the platform should support a parallel port (IBM said yes and Apple said no) and other stupid trivia that the arrogance of the two companies allowed to kill the project. So, it died the same way that Talligent did. The reason the NT4 version worked on IBM was that it was developed jointly by Microsoft and the IBM site in Kirkland, Washington.

How to print to a network printer

[tm2b]

It's actually really straightforward, I do it all the time.

Go to your Windows control panel ->printers folder. Add a printer of type "Mac Printer (inkjet)" or "...(postscript)". Tell it that you want to be local, you'll be using the Mac OS X printing system to do the transport.

I didn't have to do any more configuring, since my network printer is my Mac OS X default printer.

YES! PC-on-a-PCI-card for Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been suggesting the same thing for a while. The old cards that did this were expensive and a great deal of effort was spent integrating them into the Mac. But I think it could be cheap if you could use an existing PC-on-a-PCI Card. The Mac would only need to supply it power and allow hard drive access. Keyboard, media and display access through VNC or Remote Desktop. If it was running XP create a virtual switch and run XP remotely. Display, sound, KB&M and all other media can be feed through the Remote Desktop connection.

I would think it could be pretty easy.

It Won't -- Because It Shouldn't

[UNIBLAB_PowerPC]

I haven't used anything beyond VPC 4.x in "Classic" Mac OS, but you shouldn't ever need something like Partition Magic -- VPC stores all of the Windows OS, Windows apps, and Windows files in a single Mac file. Regarding this single file, you have two options: either allow the file(partition) to grow as necessary, or set it to a fixed amount (which I'd imagine VPC allocates and squats on said drive space).

I'd be curious if they used the package format in Mac OS X to make each Windows "partion" appear to be a single file while leaving the option of browsing the contents, but that's another story.

And you can also connect to Mac folders as virtual network shares/drives, so keeping common files from hogging space on your Windows partition(s) is a snap.

Re:It Won't -- Because It Shouldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another joke has flown over someone's head....

2060 vs. 2070

[platipusrc]

I remember the different between these two models now. The 2060 is the normal light cream monitor color, and the 2070 is a black monitor. They are pretty much the same thing otherwise.

Well Apple killed BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft just happened to be around when Be Inc. drew its last breath. Closing the clone makers, and many other "sins" seem to be pretty bad. And don't forget Apple has a monopoly on the PowerPC platform, its just that noone cares enough to take them to court for strong arm tactics.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[birdman666]

Considering the new 1.42 Ghz machines are dual processors, by your theory i would expect more than just a 750mhz PIII, something more along the lines of a 1.0-1.2 ghz athlon, depending on how well VPC takes advantage of dual processors. That's not that bad a machine if you think about it.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual PC is also sold for Windows, you know. Why would you run Windows when you're already running it? I'm sure there's a good reason.

A great tool for switchers

[Go Aptran]

It's a pity that Apple didn't buy VPC. If they bundled a barebones version of VPC with OSX, some nervous would-be switchers might be more likely to buy a Mac. I doubt that Microsoft would kill the product, but it's very likely that the next version will "report home" more often with what you do with your Virtual PC. I hope I'm wrong about this.

I bought VPC when I bought my TiBook and found it extremely helpful. I installed Win 98 on it and Office 97 to work with my old ACCESS databases and it worked in a fairly speedy fashion. I also used it to handle various media files that QuickTime couldn't handle.

I LOVE being able to drag a file from my Windows desktop to the Mac OSX desktop and watch the icon change as it crosses "the border" between the two operating systems.

As I've replaced my Windows software with Mac equivalents (which are often improvements) I've used VPC less and less often... lately just to use Kazaa to download music. Before anyone suggests any OSX replacements for Kazaa... I've tried all sorts of Peer-2-Peer clients on the Mac (Lamewire anyone?) and can't find anything that even begins come close!

Re:A great tool for switchers

[burns210]

First, why would steve jobs want a selling point for his computer to be "it runs the other guys system, too!"? He would rather say, you don't need the other guy's system, the mac has everything you need and it has better, prettier ways of doing it.

Finally, I will rehash what many have already said. Why buy conectix, when you can instead build relations in the opensource world by helping develop for bochs? Yes, bochs isn't as far along, but that is why it needs help in development. Version 2, is twice(!) as fast as 1.x, so it clearly being improved, and a company like apple could only help it along.

Re:A great tool for switchers

[Lord Flipper]

but it's very likely that the next version will "report home" more often with what you do with your Virtual PC.

Use the app, Little Snitch(TM) <http://www.obdev.at/>

Nothing 'calls home' unless I say "yeah, go ahead"...nothing.

I open the Sys Prefs, click Lil Snitch, hit admin pass, 'New', browse to VPC, click 'Rules':

Application: VirtualPC
Permission: Deny
Server: any
Port: any
Protocol: any

If you're testing browsers in Win32, then you just kill the "Deny" and get an OSX window giving chance to allow/deny each attempt at UDP/TCP that identifies what is trying to call out, which port, to which server, etc.. allow IE, etc, and kill the rest.

But VPC, like Adobe, OfficeX, etc, just keeps right on going, apps 'assuming' there's no net connect available, biz as usual...

End of phone home, E.T. have to write letter :=)

Adjectivess..?

[VValdo]

Viewing multimedia is nicer, opening apps is quicker, moving around the filesystem is zippier (I am running out of adjectives here, bear with me).

I believe the preferred term is "Snappier".

:)
W

yes, you can connect to yourself

[mveloso]

The problem is that the IP stuff in macosx is normally link-sensitive.

You can, however, create fake IPs using ifconfig.

You can also do what my CTO did, which is wire a RJ connector to connect to itself and plug it in. How about that?

Re:Ad-vatorial review plant story - needs disclaim

[Lars T.]

Yeah, since MS owns it. Bah.

Anti-MS Macintosh Zealots

[Cliff]

I am anti-Microsoft, and I own a Macintosh. Does this make me an anti-MS Mac zealot too?

Please help me resolve my confusion, pudge! You are my only hope! :-D

OK, OK. Now to cease my impersonation of your average brain-dead troll and being completely honest, I think you can be anti-MS and own a Mac and not be an "anti-MS Mac zealot". I subscribe to the camp that drops the word "zealot" from that title since my life doesn't revolve around criticisizing Microsoft at every wrong turn (no, my job revolves around that, which is a totally different critter), I have begrudgingly recommended Microsoft products at several turns, which defintely eliminates me from the "zealot" camp.

Honestly, folks. I think you all need new labels. Computer users are growing up.

Re:Anti-MS Macintosh Zealots

[pudge]

I did not say all Mac users are anti-MS zealots. I didn't say all anti-MS people are zealots. But all the longtime Mac users I know are, in fact, anti-MS zealots, and I am one of them. :-)

My zealotry has been tempered over the years, but like Yasser Arafat, my hatred for the enemy burns on.

Without Virtual PC 5.0, I would not have ...

[torpor]

... been able to switch from both Windows *and* Linux hardware, to the tiBook.

I've been able to maintain a plenty good Linux fix with VPC 5.0, among other similar OS's. And the occasional Windows requirement, though I've officially ditched those files now.

VPC under OSX is very, very fun. Now all I need is a freakin' faster processor ...

Re:Without Virtual PC 5.0, I would not have ...

[Squidgee]

FYI, you can run Yellow Dog Linux (Google for it...I'm feeling lazy) to run Linux on your Mac. It's Red Hat based, and comes with Mac-On-Linux, which lets you run Mac OS X and YDL at the same time. Same goes for Red Hat and SuSe -- just get the PPC versions.

Re:Without Virtual PC 5.0, I would not have ...

[Feral Bueller]

The nice thing about VPC is that you can easily save your OS file, so once you've gone through installation and configuration, just back it up.

very cool for quick and dirty XPLAT testing: restoring the file is a non-event.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[smagoun]

VPC does indeed take advantage of multiple CPUs, but only to the effect that it pushes some of the threads (disk, graphics) to the other CPU. The emulation core itself is single-threaded (as it has to be; a multithreaded core would be a nightmare to code, if it could be made to work at all). While there's a definite speedup because of the second processor, it's on the order of 5-10% IIRC.

Something else....one of the most important factors in VPC's speed is the size of the host processor's cache. The 1.42ghz machines have a 256k on-chip L2 cache and a 2MB L3 cache. That's pretty big, which benefits VPC. The extra 1MB of cache (compared to my Powerbook) is probably worth a few %.

Even with the second CPU and extra cache, I think that 750-800Mhz is about all you can reasonably expect from the 1.42ghz machines. Of course, I've never tried it so I could be wrong.

Even better than that...

[thatguywhoiam]

I once read about a guy running a webserver at (I believe) University of Texas. He was running this:

Macintosh G3 -> running BeOS, which was running Sheepshaver, which was running Mac OS 8, which was running Virtual PC, which was running Windows NT 4, which was serving his website.

He figured that it had to crash really fucking hard to go through the wall, so to speak, of 3 different operating systems. Sort of a padded cell for IIS.

Re:The great mac irony

[geekoid]

I'm not a MAC owner, but I am thinking of switching.

So I'm standing in a software store looking at mac games, they have a smaller section, but in the smaller section, they had all the titles i'm intersted in.
SO I wonder how important windows is for gaming. sure, they'll be a few ttle that won't come over, but it looked like enough of them do.

VPC 6.0.1 Updater has fixed quite few nasty bugs

[afantee]

It's mainly for G3 Mac, and might improve G4 as well.

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[VeryPuzzled]

This is exactly why I tought benchmarks would do the trick. Something like the ones PC Magazine (or other ones in the same vein) uses would do, just to give an idea about the general performance of the emulated machine on certain tasks. Frankly, it doesn't really matter how precise they are; they can at least tell us how different disk and video performance is on a DP PowerMac vs an iBook... ;-)

At least, it's a start. Even without entering the complexities of emulation in general, it would at least give a trend, and it does make more sense than flipping arms to see if one can fly!

Thanks anyways to everyone who did post intelligent results and constructive remarks along this thread, since know know a little better how well VPC "looks like" in a user's life... and that's appreciated!

Network Printers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gak. I didn't buy a $2000 Mac so i could hook up a $150 POS printer to it. How well does VPC deal with an IP printer? Appletalk?

Connectix quote on 3D acceleration support

[Anonymous Coward]

Copied from old www.xlr8yourmac.com article:

Connectix Comments on Virtual PC 4 Altivec Support & Why Voodoo Card Support Was Removed:
Last Updated: 12/11/2000, 2:36 PM
Connectix sent a reply to my questions on why VPC v4 removed 3D hardware acceleration support for the 3dfx Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards which were supported in VPC versions 2 and 3. Their comments also cover the requirements of a G3 or G4 CPU, and how Altivec is utilized for better performance.

" ...the support for Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards that was in VPC3 has been removed. Let me explain why.

One of the challenges in emulating a Pentium processor is that Intel chips store multi-byte data in reverse order from the PowerPC. This difference in "endianness" must be taken into account when executing Pentium code. The PowerPC has a special mode which allows it to simulate little endianÓ mode (the native mode of Intel-compatible processors). However, on PowerPC processors prior to the G3, this mode came at a high performance cost - especially when the data in memory was "misaligned" (i.e. not stored to memory locations that are divisible by the size of the data). The G3 and G4 processors removed these performance bottlenecks, allowing Connectix engineers to finally take advantage of this previously ignored feature.

Because of Virtual PC 4.0's reliance on this "little endian" mode, support for processors older than G3's had to be dropped. Users who own Macs based on 601, 603 or 604 will have to either upgrade their processors to G3's or continue to use Virtual PC 3.0.

For those Mac users who are lucky enough to own a G4 machine, Virtual PC 4.0 also makes more extensive use of AltiVec to speed up certain operations. In particular, MMX emulation is now up to three times faster on G4 processors. AltiVec is also used within Virtual PC 4.0 to speed up the transfer of pixel data to the Mac video display, resulting in a "snappier" feel when running PC software.

With specific regard to video, there are three primary changes in Virtual PC 4.0: the VRAM is now always set to 4MB (it used to be configurable), video updates are much faster (resulting in a snappier feel), and the emulated video card now has support for wide aspect resolutions found on the Apple cinema display (1600x1024 and 800x512).

Virtual PC 4.0 does not contain support for 3D hardware acceleration. To date, we have avoided adding 3D support because of the complex issues involved. There are many technical obstacles to providing 3D acceleration support from within an emulator - most of them are not obvious at first glance. We will be exploring the feasibility of 3D emulation in the future, but we felt that faster core processor emulation was of greater importance to most of our current Virtual PC users.

Virtual PC 4.0 also removes support for Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 video cards. As mentioned above, the new Pentium emulation core runs in the PowerPC's "little endian" mode. This mode is incompatible with Voodoo frame buffers, so it is no longer feasible to support Voodoo cards within the emulator. The decision to drop Voodoo support was supported by marketing research showing that the vast majority of Virtual PC customers use the product for business and education applications where 3D support is of limited use. Users who want Voodoo compatibility should stick with Virtual PC 3.0.

------------
Kurt Schmucker
Director, Macintosh Products
Connectix Corporation"

Connectix Aquired by Microsoft

[sc2_ct]

How can all these people be saying that it is such a good way to get away from Microsoft when Connectix is actually owned by Microsoft? http://www.connectix.com/about/acquisition_win.htm l

No longer true

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Nvidia card from the GF2MX up to the present includes bi-endian support built into the GPU. The original GeForce and GF2 did not. (Note that the GF2MX was the first Nvidia card used in Macs)
All current ATI GPUs also have bi-endian support to my knowledge, and in fact several PC version Nvidia and ATI cards can be flashed with Mac ROM making them fully Mac compatible. I suspect there are more software engineering issues for 3D accel support in VirtualPC other than bi-endian GPU support.

slowwwww

[dirvish]

I have used previous versions of Virtual PC and they were very slow, even on a G4. I have also used virtual PC on a PC (running red hat on XP) and it was also very slow.

By very slow I mean excruciatingly, painfully slow. It is better to just have a shitty old PC with a KVM switch if you are a mac user who needs to use a PC.

Nokia WAP Toolkit?

[boomgopher]

I use Nokia's WAP development toolkit, and while it's not setting speed records on my computer, it works for what I need it to do.

Dumb question, but isn't the Nokia WAP toolkit Java Swing? Why do you need VPC for a Java app?

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

i would think that the BSODs would increase exponentially when running windows within windows

Re:c-a-r-t-e-l? I think not

[grantb]

There are alternatives to OS X, you can run Linux (Debian,Yellow Dog, ect..) or BSD in almost all varients. As for the hardware As for hardware there are alternatives to getting a G4 form apple such as TerraSoft which can be built and configured to run any linux / BSD or apple's Mac OS X (stories have been on slashdot not too long ago). The main reason that people buy apple hardware is due to the superior quality, design and performance. As for it being a cartel, apple needs to advertise to compete with popular ideas of a macintosh and the current 95% of advertising out there. So I don't think that you are forced to run OS X or buy their hardware. It is a conscience decision made by well informed people for what ever reason. Or are we all suffering from some form of mass delusion ?

You're a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

If you bought VPC, odds are you're running Windows. Last time i checked, Windows is a certified MS product....

Re:You're a moron

[JudgeFurious]

You are rude and do not have any grounds to base your assertion that I am a "moron".

I bought Virtual PC with PC-DOS and I run Red Hat and OS/2 4 on it. I have copies of Windows I could install on it (I also own a number of PC's that came with the obligatory copy of Windows installed) but I choose not to.

You had to check to see if Windows was a certified MS product?

Re:You're a moron

[VAXGeek]

By definition, if you're running OS/2 you ARE a moron.

Re:You're a moron

[VAXGeek]

who says you have to run VMS on a VAX?

Re:VPC 6 & FreeBSD - Sound, yes; X, no; clock,

[stefanb]

X has never worked.

This is something that has puzzled me with reviews of both VPC and VMware.

Why do you want to run X on an emulated graphics card? If you're a XFree developer, then this might be useful, but otherwise?

Apple's X server as well as the seperatly maintained XFree-based server seem to work quite fine, and with the inherent transportability of X, it just works.

Or is it that certain people hate X and deliberately break it, like fontconfig?

Re:The great mac irony

[xmnemonic]

While this may seem to be a troll, I think this poster does have a point. Mac users should realize that as much as they disparage the PC world, it is that world in which they exist.

Macs, like PC's, are just tools. Nothing more.

Oh I see !

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Macs had everything Windows has, and even more. Is that true ? Instead of buying your tupperware looking toy, you should have bought a real computer instead, stupid !

Re:Oh I see !

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. Go play with dick.

Re:Oh I see !

[Anonymous Coward]

Stoopid, go play with dictionary. Taco ?

They're not toad...

[kwerle]

SQLGrinder
or (free)
DBVisualizer

We have grinder in the office, and if I end up doing too much more SQL work, myself, I'll probably grab a copy. Right now I use DBVis, which is a nice free product. Both have their pros and cons, and neither is TOAD, but if you don't want to fire up (or buy) VPC, they may be good enough.

For your kid's sake

[Sycraft-fu]

I hope he grows up a whole lot smarter than you.

Get a life, MS is no better or worse than Apple (who you obviously use) or any of the huge corperations that you never hear or think about but that control many things in your life like GE, Sysco, or Du-pont.

Re:For your kid's sake

[JudgeFurious]

For the record I hope he does too. Having said that though I would say that it's easy enough to prove that MS is worse than Apple or any number of other huge corporations. For one thing there is the little matter of their being ruled against in their recent anti-trust case.

If Apple was in the same dominant position that Microsoft is in then I can't say they wouldn't be as bad as Microsoft. They are not nor are they likely to be anytime soon. As things stand I can make my decisions based on nothing more than what's transpired to date and to date Microsoft is clearly the greater of two evils. Any fool can see that so why can't you?

Re:For your kid's sake

[Sycraft-fu]

Apple would be far WORSE than MS and I should think that is obvious. They control both software and hardware and exert an iron grip on their part of the market. Size has ntohing to do with it.

But if you are going to get whiny about monopolies then you'd better change the way you eat in a huge way, because Sysco owns basically every grain silo in the US. Private company too, so their internal workings and finincals are a mystery. Noone cares because noone knows, you see their trucks but don't know what thy are about.

Or if it is simple hugeness and strong arm tactics that pissess you off, why not go after GE? They are a much larger company than MS and they have their hand in ALL the cookie jars. They do everything from consumer good, to appliances, to jet engines, to MRI scanners, to military hardware, to finincial services (largest finincal services company there is), to media (they own NBC), and so on. I won't even get into the shady things that have gone on in their history, you can research it for yourself if you need another company to hate.

However, Apple is just as bad. They do things to boost themselves at the expense of their competition, such as buy Logic Audio and then kill all PC support instantly. They have a total monopoly on their platform, you may not sell a Mac unless they allow you to do so, and it is only to be sold as they spec. Like any large company, they have done some chady and unethical things.

You should just stop with your silly crusade. It's pointless and ill informed, but then so are most. Big companies do not exist for your benefit, they exist for their own benefit. Capatalism is based on controlled greed and you need to come to terms with that. All big companies and even most small companies have done an unethical thing at one time or another. Many are MUCH worse than MS. Hating them because they get all the press time is just being uneducated.

Re:For your kid's sake

[JudgeFurious]

Apple "Would be" far worse than MS?

"Would be" meaning that they aren't at this time right?

My own review

[azav]

I've got win 98, win 2k and win xp on my 1G Tibook with vpc 6

98 is acceptible in speed. The others are pretty pokey.

Certian things like fullscreen 3d software are not supported.

Director projectors hang loading the SW3D xtra

HOWEVER, networking is a breeze since it uses what your mac uses. If you have a fast mac, this could be a viable option to a real pc.

Re:Emulate, what ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike a large number of Linux companies who just died, more than a few by surprise.

A large number of linux companies just died? Nobody told me. If by "a large number" you mean "one", and by "just" you mean "a long time ago", then you would be fairly accurate. Otherwise either you have some information that nobody else has, or you're full of shit. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Guess Apple is so fed up...

[No. 24601]

failing to make a real PC, they've decided their only way to profitability is to make a virtual one.

Re:Guess Apple is so fed up...

[malia8888]

Who says Apple isn't profitable? Who wants a "real" PC?

Keeping PDF bookmarks

[descubes]

I use Ghostscript's 'ps2pdf' program to generate PDF files. It does keep bookmarks, at least when printing from FrameMaker (I don't use Word too much, but that's probably the same thing).

So here is what I do (not quite as easy as you'd like, but it works):
- First, install ghostscript or some package with ps2pdf. Left as an exercise for the reader.
- Second, print to a postscript file, generate PDF hints
- Third, invoke ps2pdf on the generated PS file.
You generally want to include all the required fonts in the document, ps2pdf doesn't seem too good at finding fonts by itself.

ps2pdf also solved another problem for me, namely printing from Classic applications when my printer's driver exists only for OSX - Solution: print to PS, convert to PDF, print the PDF from OSX.

Hope this helps...

Re:Keeping PDF bookmarks

[david-bo]

Why take the extra step with printing to a ps-file when you can use the (nowadays working!) built in pdf features in Framemaker?

Kiss and Make-up

[malia8888]

My first response when seeing that Microsoft had purchased Connectix' VPC was that they would probably "improve it until it is is unusable." Having Bill Gates buy something to make an Apple product run better is like having your ex-wife ask to do your new bride's make-up; you have to wonder what her motive is.

Re:Kiss and Make-up

[KefkaFloyd]

VPC 6 was released before the buyout.

Re:Kiss and Make-up

[malia8888]

only speaking of the purchase of Virtual PC by Bill Gates per se not what version.

get it through your heads... what ms cares aboutis

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason MS bought VPC is to develop a virtual server host like VMWARE's GSX/ESX servers... do you really think they care about EMU on Macs???

btw.... vmware rocks.

Micro$oft's NEW Business Strategy

[IllogicalStudent]

Damn their marketing dept...

1. Buy excellent piece of Connectix software
2. Obtain glowing review of such software on Slashdot -- A GLOWING REVIEW OF A MICROSOFT PRODUCT -- and effectively confuse the hell out of the "unwashed masses"
3. ???
4. Pro^H^H^H (oh wait, this is Micro$oft) Dominate World

:: Cue Bill Gates' maniacal laughter ::

Re:What I want to know - We need benchmarks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Connectix doesn't require an L3 (for example it will run on the PB G4 867) but recommends it for best possible performance. Only if Apple would start making L3 caches standard as opposed to optional. Take a look at www.macspeedzone.com to see the results, but in a nutshell 1 MB cache gives you an additional 20%.

Best sig ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Best sig ever!

>Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)

webcams

[gbpuckett]

When I bought a new (classic) iMac, a year ago, I bought a copy of VPC5 with XP primarily because my kids wanted to use a webcam someone had given them that wouldn't work with a Mac. To our great disappointment, I found that VPC didn't pick up the USB connection. Then I tried a digital camera that was set up for Windows. Likewise, VPC wouldn't recognize the USB link. Aside from printers, I found that VPC wouldn't recognize any Windows USB peripherals I could get my hands on. I ended up returning VPC for a refund for just that reason. Still, I'd consider it again if the new version gave thorough support for Windows USB.

Re:webcams

[Squidgee]

Uhm...you need to click on the USB settings on the VPC Windows window, and mount the USB device that way...

It doesn't just automagically mount the USB device; you actually have to tell the PC it's connected first. It's like connecting the USB device into the Virtual PC.

Re:webcams

[phpsocialclub]

This looks like the most expensive webcam anyone has ever been given, wouldn't have made more sense to buy a mac web cam, not a windows license and VPC

Intrigueing possibility

[overunderunderdone]

I recall reading an article a few years back about *Apple* getting a patent on using two procs for emulation. Apparently one proc would handle the emulation and the other would be running the (now) native code. It would be interesting to see Apple actually implement this, maybe if Microsoft kills VPC they will.

I use VPC6

[shiroi_kami]

I use VPC6 on a PowerBook G4 w/Win XP. Unfortunately the product is basically useless for running any graphical software, even when configured with 90% available resources. However, the latest patch and Jaguar upgrade does speed it up a bit (still no good for gaming though).

Re:The great mac irony

[xmnemonic]

Oh please. How was my comment a troll? Is there any way to post something negative about Apple users and/or Apple's products without it being considered a troll?

Don't mod me down just because you disagree with me.

Be doesn't run on the G3.

[solios]

I'll bite it and indulge the poster with a clarification.

BeOS does not run on the G3 or G4 processors.

In fact, the company made rather a large deal whining about how Apple wouldn't give them the specs. Which is why r5 wasn't released for PPC. BeOS r4 will run on supported 604s and (I think) 603s.

So you could technically do:

7300 -> Be r4 -> Sheepshaver -> MacOS -> VPC -> NT4.

Of course, by the same token, you could run OS X Server on a G3, run 8.5 in the bluebox, and then VPC on top of that.

In my experience, while Be was nice, it was about as stable as lint under a blowtorch. OS X Server, conversely, was a tank.

Re:Be doesn't run on the G3.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

Be runs just fine on the G3.

What it doesn't do is run on machines Apple shipped with a G3. The problem wasn't the G3, but the motherboard. (Be could get all the dox they wanted on the G3 from Motrola or IBM, they didn't need Apple for that).

BeOS r5 runs great on my PowerMac 8500 with a Sonnet G3 upgrade card in it.

what are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

your post is a pipe dream.
1st, even if someone got it working like you dream of, it would be ugly and very awkward to have windows apps running side by side mac os x apps. try running x11 for os x and you'll see what I mean.

thats one of the good things about vpc, it keeps everything in its own little window.

code rewriting would be painfully difficult, not worth the massive amounts of money an emulator's developers would have to throw at it to solve this problem. not to mention code rewriting (AKA ALTERING THE BINARY CODE) would probably get a lawsuit really quickly from MS and the software vendor.

I think you're pasting together "knowlege" you have from various IT-lite mags to formulate this idea.

of course, MS could always release Office as a Java app and it would run anywhere ;) Java apps are almost as slow as running VPC so it would seem the same.