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Virtual PC 6 Review
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.
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:)
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.
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!
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Free your mind.
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?
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
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.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
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.
blog |
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.
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?
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?
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
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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...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
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.
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.
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.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Does it come with a lightgun?
... and watch them recoil in 3D blocky splendour!
;-)
If I'm gonna play VirtuaPC, I need a lightgun so I can shoot all those stupid Windows applications
Woo! VirtuaFighter!
Erm, I mean, VirtuaPC.
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
Cheap UK and US VPS
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?
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.
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.
I write in my journal
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.
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.
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.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
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
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? ^_^
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
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.
$0.02 (CDN)
The problem, however, is in the graphics. Graphics are simply too slow, and it doesn't have good DirectX support either. It emulates an S3 graphics card... I hope Microsoft fixes this issue in the next verion of VPC, because processor emulation is fast, UI and graphics are slow.
Like this (search for Houdini)? There were also (as you mention) the various Janus Bridgeboards for the Amigas. The fastest was a '486dx66, I think. There was even a A500 '286 card that connected to the memory expansion slot (!) at the bottom of the computer. With glorious Herkules graphics.
In other words, it has been tried. These card all had some things in common:
This concept could work, but only when there is a high volume PC motherboard form factor that's smaller than a PCI (or whatever we're using then) card. Then you can make a PCI-shaped 'glue' kit that plugs into the motherboards various connectors and fits into a PCI slot in another system.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
The issue is not whether M$ 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.
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.
Even superheroes once were losers
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..
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!
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
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?
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.
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.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
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
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...
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net