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Macpilot · Dec 8, 2004, 07:54 PM

Hello guys.

In transitioning to a new job I am going to need to interact with Windows-people. I decided that the easiest way to do this was to purchase VPC 7.

I was wondering if there was any specific advice regarding installing this software. I have not used Windows exclusively for many years. I used to have VPC a long time ago with Win98 on it and was pretty impressed at its abilities.

And what about viruses? I know the Windows viruses cannot infect my Mac, but will I have to get anti-virus software for VPC to keep it running well? I am assuming so.

I got the VPC with XP Professional. This will be running on a 1.5 Powerbook with 1 gig of Ram. Should I get more Ram?

hldan · Dec 8, 2004, 09:44 PM

Originally posted by Macpilot:
Hello guys.

In transitioning to a new job I am going to need to interact with Windows-people. I decided that the easiest way to do this was to purchase VPC 7.

I was wondering if there was any specific advice regarding installing this software. I have not used Windows exclusively for many years. I used to have VPC a long time ago with Win98 on it and was pretty impressed at its abilities.

And what about viruses? I know the Windows viruses cannot infect my Mac, but will I have to get anti-virus software for VPC to keep it running well? I am assuming so.

I got the VPC with XP Professional. This will be running on a 1.5 Powerbook with 1 gig of Ram. Should I get more Ram?

I bought the VPC 7 package with XP Pro. I have a Powerbook 1.33 Ghz with 2GB ram. 1GB ram will be fine however using Virtual PC will eat up ram with 512MB allocated and your Powerbook will get more ram pageouts which will result in slower performance so if you can afford to install 1.5GB -2GB go for it.
The Virtual PC 7 program runs great however XP SP2 is quite irritating because of sluggish performance and SP2 bloats the XP OS which adds further sluggish performance. If you can get a copy of Windows 2000 Professional the performance will be much more like a physical PC.
If you can get a copy of any anti virus software for free then install it in Win 2000 but with XP SP2 it may make your VPC experience even slower.
Don't worry too much about viruses. Just save your work and if you get a virus in Windows then just simply delete the whole VPC with Windows app and reinstall it.

Macpilot · Dec 8, 2004, 10:06 PM

Is SP2 really necessary? What I need this VPC for is running a program for flight planning and that is it. I am assuming that the program is not going to require much resources.

Is XP really that much worse than 2000? What is the major difference?

Thanks for you input!

hldan · Dec 9, 2004, 01:59 AM

Originally posted by Macpilot:
Is SP2 really necessary? What I need this VPC for is running a program for flight planning and that is it. I am assuming that the program is not going to require much resources.

Is XP really that much worse than 2000? What is the major difference?

Thanks for you input!

Windows XP and 2000 are essentially the same OS except XP has all the eye candy that 2000 lacks also XP has some new enhancements to the OS that make it more plug and play unfortuntely it lacks compatibility with legacy Windows apps therefore Win 2000 is better.
XP SP2 is bloated with more security enhancements and because of this the OS will run it's best on a really fast PC.
If you already have VPC 7 w/ XP SP2 then just turn off the eye candy in Windows and allocate 512MB ram towards VPC and it should run decently.

Macpilot · Dec 9, 2004, 10:02 AM

Well thank you for your input...you have been very helpful.

southtdi · Dec 9, 2004, 10:31 AM

Just in case you haven't bought Virtual PC 7 yet, it is now out with Windows 2000 and a non-OS version in case you have a full copy of Windows you would rather use. I beeive it hit the shelves Monday.

PubGuy · Dec 9, 2004, 08:39 PM

I've got VPC7 and have both Win XP Pro and Win2000 Pro images -- the Win2000 Pro is noticibly faster than the XP image. I also use VPC7 only for some specific flight planning software.

On allocating memory to VPC, Win2K should have 256MB RAM. You need to leave minimum of 256K available for OS X....if you leave less than that for OS X, then your whole computer will slow down.

johnpaul · Dec 30, 2004, 11:08 PM

I'm a rookie, both to MACs and this board. I want to install Virtual PC 7 on my iMAC G5, but am worried about spyware and virus problems. Should I be? If I get a virus, will it affect the MAC? Is it as easy as you suggest to just delete the VPC and reinstall it?

JP

Randman · Dec 31, 2004, 03:19 AM

Welcome to the board. And it's Mac and iMac not MAC.

If you download an application that has spyware or a virus, it could infect your Windows operating system, but not the Mac side. And all you'd need to do is reinstall it. Or run a virus program like Virex 7.5.1 (free with .Mac).

johnpaul · Dec 31, 2004, 07:25 AM

Thanks, Randman, I feel better already. If I allocate half my RAM (512) to Windows, that will slow down the Mac while they're both operating, right? But once I close VPC, everything returns to normal on the Mac-side. Is that right?

JP

Randman · Dec 31, 2004, 12:50 PM

Yes. And if you aren't using OSX apps at the same time, you should be ok. I'd leave at least 256 of ram for the OSX side. Too bad one can't allocate more than 512 to VPC if you have the ram to spare.

Check some older threads. Good tips on maximising usage of VPC, basically turning off eye candy.

Macpilot · Jan 1, 2005, 10:06 PM

Well, VPC 7 is pretty cool. I am bummed as I can only allot 512 megs of RAM to it. Bought 2 gigs of RAM for the Powerbook before I knew this.

The manual that comes with VPC is pretty weak. I am still trying to figure out how the whole "COM" port works. I am assuming it allows you to simulate a COM port on the Mac's USB port.

johnpaul · Jan 2, 2005, 12:28 AM

Well, after working it with it for two days and several reinstallations, I'm not impressed. The VPC performance is far worse than sluggish. In the few weeks I've had the iMac, I've become spoiled by its speed, especially compared to Windows. But now the Windows VPC is even more lethargic than the orignial. When in Virtual PC, for example, I'm forced to stop using the Mac because there's not enough resources to multi-task, even with 512 RAM.

The Mac prople I've spoken with have almost all said that they simply bought a cheap PC to handle Windows work. I'll look for some older threads, as you suggest, but I may be hard to convince.

JP

Macpilot · Jan 2, 2005, 02:03 AM

Originally posted by johnpaul:
Well, after working it with it for two days and several reinstallations, I'm not impressed. The VPC performance is far worse than sluggish. In the few weeks I've had the iMac, I've become spoiled by its speed, especially compared to Windows. But now the Windows VPC is even more lethargic than the orignial. When in Virtual PC, for example, I'm forced to stop using the Mac because there's not enough resources to multi-task, even with 512 RAM.

The Mac prople I've spoken with have almost all said that they simply bought a cheap PC to handle Windows work. I'll look for some older threads, as you suggest, but I may be hard to convince.

JP

I would agree that it is quite sluggish. For me however, I won't need to use it too often, but often enough to warrant having it. I could just not bear to carry around a Windows laptop in addition to my Powerbook.

I have found that the most time is spent booting up the VPC, and once it is running, it is usable for the most part.

I am just having fun watching all the warnings about viruses. Kinda funny.

Sven G · Jan 2, 2005, 05:38 AM

... As for virus protection, the new AVG 7 (free edition) is the ideal VPC antivirus solution: free, unobtrusive, and even with Safari-like automatic update (see the download progress indicator, similar to Apple's web browser's page loading blue bar). As for optimising performance, I posted an "official" document in the previous thread: it will certainly not let Windows XP fly, but maybe it will help those who have less than 1 GB RAM - maybe (personally, I just use the grey XP theme, a little more "professional" than the default blue one)...

joe · Jan 2, 2005, 08:45 AM

Originally posted by johnpaul:
Well, after working it with it for two days and several reinstallations, I'm not impressed. The VPC performance is far worse than sluggish. In the few weeks I've had the iMac, I've become spoiled by its speed, especially compared to Windows. But now the Windows VPC is even more lethargic than the orignial. When in Virtual PC, for example, I'm forced to stop using the Mac because there's not enough resources to multi-task, even with 512 RAM.

If this is a G5 iMac with 512MB RAM then I'm in a similar situation. I bought VPC7 with XPpro and installed on a 1.25GHz G4 PowerBook at work. The PowerBook has 1.25GB of RAM and a slow-ish 4200rpm hard drive. Even so, it runs VPC7 / XPpro a helluva lot faster and smoother than my 1.8GHz G5 iMac. I'm sure part of the problem is that the 512MB of RAM in my iMac isn't enough to handle VPC/XPpro and MacOSX. But the G5 chip also lacks a hardware feature that helps with x86 emulation which the G4 chip has built-in. The G5 has to emulate this feature in software which may or may not be a contributing factor given the faster clock speed (1.8GHz G5 vs 1.25GHz G4). The only way for me to find out is to buy a 1GB DIMM for my G5 iMac and compare it to my PowerBook at work. And that's not very likely.

The Mac prople I've spoken with have almost all said that they simply bought a cheap PC to handle Windows work. I'll look for some older threads, as you suggest, but I may be hard to convince.

In my VPC experience it depends on what software you need to run. At work I run some proprietary Windows-only and DOS-only software. It's mostly programming and compiling and (believe it or not) HyperTerminal for some remote dial-up job sites. Those work extremely well in VPC under XPpro (purchased with VPC7) and Win98SE (installed from my own discs). Anything more demanding like games are best left to a real PC. FWIW my PowerBook can play back low to medium res DivX files without dropping a frame in XPpro. Of course you're better off doing that in MacOSX with VLC or MPlayer. That was just to give you an idea of how VPC7 performs.

iluvmymactoo · Jan 4, 2005, 12:40 AM

Can I also suggest that before you install your window$ 2K or XP make sure you first create a "Fixed Sized Disk". I created a 2 gig one for XP and have not added SP2.

If you just use the default installation then you will likely end up using around 4 or more gig. This type of installtion is "expandable". Your virtual machine allocates a virtual 15gig partition, which means at anytime it can expand the actual size up to 15gig.

Just wanted to provide this for those who aren't too sure