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chrisutley · Mar 1, 2004, 04:56 PM

I have a new job where I will need to run some Windows based apps for web development from time to time. I do Java and PHP so I don't have to worry about any hardcore compiling or anything like that. I'm just wondering if VPC running XP or Win 2K is decent?

The last machine I tried it on was a 667 DVI PowerBook, and the performance was so poor that I continue to have a Windows box under my desk and connect to it using RDC. Now I need a portable Windows solution, and I really hope that doesn't mean using a Windows laptop.

I'd be looking at either a 15" 1GHz or the 1.25GHz. Do you think a 7200 RPM hard drive would help VPC much?

Any input would be appreciated.

hyteckit · Mar 1, 2004, 07:47 PM

Well, 1.25GHz isn't going to give you much of a performance boost from your 667MHz powerbook especially with the small L3 cache in the new powerbooks.

If you are running VirtualPC on the 1.25GHz powerbook, you definitely want at least 1GB of RAM, preferably 1.5GB RAM.

tomw · Mar 1, 2004, 09:15 PM

I've got a 17" 1.33G PowerBook with 1GB of RAM and the 5400 rpm drive.

Running VPC 6.01 with Windows 2000 and 320MB RAM allocated to it. The "System Info" function from Word / Excel, etc rates it as a 325MHz CPU - and that feels about right compared to other machines I've used.

joe · Mar 1, 2004, 10:02 PM

Originally posted by chrisutley:
I have a new job where I will need to run some Windows based apps for web development from time to time. I do Java and PHP so I don't have to worry about any hardcore compiling or anything like that. I'm just wondering if VPC running XP or Win 2K is decent?
<snip>
I'd be looking at either a 15" 1GHz or the 1.25GHz. Do you think a 7200 RPM hard drive would help VPC much?

I have a 1.25GHz AlBook at work running Win XP pro. It's sluggish in some ways - yet surprisingly fast and smooth in others. Example: boot times are so slow that I always use the VPC save option (Windows starts in a few seconds). Yet I can play 320*240 video streams in near-perfect a/v sync - even when scaled 200%. From what I've read in the forums, I don't think that's possible with VPC/Win2K. At least I haven't heard of anyone else being able to do video with a/v sync until I bought VPC with WinXP. VPC doesn't use much RAM. I upgraded to 1.25GB but VPC performance seemed about the same (though Jaguar improved noticeably). I had the same idea as you and plan to eventually upgrade to a 7200rpm 60GB Hitachi hard drive to improve overall performance (OSX and WinXP). I'm betting it will help with Windows since it accesses the hard drive quite often under VPC.

I very highly recommend going for the 1.25GHz PB over the 1.0GHz. On a clean install of VPC / Win XP pro my 1.25GHz AlBook showed up as a 595MHz Pentium. After installing all the latest Windows security updates it now shows as 300MHz Pentium. However, the performance hasn't changed despite the lower rating. So I wouldn't put much trust in those numbers. From a purely subjective standpoint I would say it "feels" closer to 600Mhz than 300Mhz. But none of the WinXP machines we have at work are slower than 2.6GHz. Some 700Mhz Win2000 machines we have are sluggish compared to 700Mhz Win98 Machines. So I'd imagine XP is even worse at 700Mhz (ie a pig). But as mentioned above I think the emulation seems faster in some ways than a real 600Mhz PC - while slower in others. So it really doesn't translate as a direct comparison MHz for MHz (IMHO). Web applications (IE, WMP) seem to run very well. I noticed video streams can take a while to start - yet run surprisingly well afterwards.

FWIW I didn't buy VPC outright. Instead I purchased Office Mac PE (professional edition) which includes the latest VPC with an WinXP Pro image, the latest Office Mac v.X, WMP, etc. It's about $80 more than Office which use on all our machines (mine is the ONLY Mac). Otherwise VPC with WinXP is around $230 by itself last time I checked. Point being - if you need both than get Office PE. You'll save quite a lot over buying them seperately.

Hope that helps. good luck...........joe

joe · Mar 1, 2004, 10:16 PM

Originally posted by tomw:
Running VPC 6.01 with Windows 2000 and 320MB RAM allocated to it.

I was wondering if you noticed a performance increase over using 128MB RAM allocation? On a real PC that's a no brainer since Win2K (and XP) benefit from 256MB of RAM or more. But from what I've seen with my VPC6.1 install, allocating more memory to Windows doesn't seem to improve performance. And on the downside, it slows down the start up times quite a lot on Win XP and Win98 even when using the save option (I haven't tried Win2K / VPC). Have you noticed something similar with VPC 6.0?........joe

Dr.Michael · Mar 2, 2004, 01:52 AM

Originally posted by chrisutley:
I have a new job where I will need to run some Windows based apps for web development from time to time. I do Java and PHP so I don't have to worry about any hardcore compiling or anything like that. I'm just wondering if VPC running XP or Win 2K is decent?

The last machine I tried it on was a 667 DVI PowerBook, and the performance was so poor that I continue to have a Windows box under my desk and connect to it using RDC. Now I need a portable Windows solution, and I really hope that doesn't mean using a Windows laptop.

I'd be looking at either a 15" 1GHz or the 1.25GHz. Do you think a 7200 RPM hard drive would help VPC much?

Any input would be appreciated.

I run Windows NT4 and RedHat 9 to TEST my java applications. Thats alright, although linux is worse than NT.

I would not recommend to develop on VPC systems. It will cost your nerves. But if you can develop on the mac and test on VPC its a great tool.

For the fun side: Dos games perform great in VPC on the new alu machines.

I have a 1GHZ, 12 inch powerbook.

Pierre B. · Mar 2, 2004, 04:41 AM

Originally posted by joe:
But from what I've seen with my VPC6.1 install, allocating more memory to Windows doesn't seem to improve performance. And on the downside, it slows down the start up times quite a lot on Win XP and Win98 even when using the save option (I haven't tried Win2K / VPC). Have you noticed something similar with VPC 6.0?........joe

Exactly my thoughts and experience. I had initially allocated 512 MB RAM and 16MB VRAM to VPC with Win2k, after reading suggestions about that. Result: major slowdowns on starting up the virtual machine and page out hell on the hard drive. This was on a 867 MHz 12" Powerbook with 640 MB RAM. After that, I reduced the allocated RAM to 128 MB and VRAM to 4 MB. Now it runs much better and the virtual machine starts up (especially from a saved state) much quicker.

In this Powerbook, the emulated processor is a 530 MHz Pentium. This is about 61% of the real processor, quite good I would say. The problem with VPC is not that; the problem is that all the graphic operations in the virtual machine have to be done by the CPU too, while they could be executed in the graphics chip directly. That's why VPC is so slow. If this issue is addressed, VPC will be a more than viable solution, especially in the speediest machines, and a great convenience for Powerbook users.

Rumors said that VPC 7 will have hardware graphics acceleration. We have not yet clear indications on that.

chrisutley · Mar 2, 2004, 09:31 AM

Wow, great information guys. Thank you.

I think the net of all this is, I will be pulling my hair out if I have to spend much time in VPC. I'm really not interested in being one of those guys that uses a Windows machine at work and a Mac at home. Hopefully I can find Mac equivalents for everything.

hyteckit · Mar 2, 2004, 05:54 PM

You definitely don't want to allocate more than half your memory to VPC. If you only have 640MB and allocate 512MB to VPC, you don't have much memory left for the OS and other processes, which causes your computer to be slow.

urrl78 · Mar 3, 2004, 05:39 PM

With W2k VPC gives my 17" 1 Ghz a reading of 667 Mhz, see pic:

http://homepage.mac.com/bhardy3/PhotoAlbum34.html

It feels about that, but on a Celeron level.
I use VPC mainly for photo editing. I am pleased with the results.

RayX · Mar 3, 2004, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by urrl78:
With W2k VPC gives my 17" 1 Ghz a reading of 667 Mhz, see pic:

http://homepage.mac.com/bhardy3/PhotoAlbum34.html

It feels about that, but on a Celeron level.
I use VPC mainly for photo editing. I am pleased with the results.

You're editing photos, on Windows, inside VPC, on a Mac...

I guess you must have a very good reason to be doing that.

mike one · Mar 4, 2004, 11:22 AM

i'm a big advocate, mostly because all my macs are booty� slow, of buying a cheap PC and using microsoft's remote desktop client and server. although this requires you to have XP pro, so this solution in the end, while faster and less painful than VPC might be more expensive.

don't have time to do the calculus now....
others may have more/better info, most likely.