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burningwheel · Sep 11, 2005, 01:25 PM

i may have to get a PC for work but i'd rather get VPC. i would eventually run VPC on a 17inch powerbook. worth getting or should i just get a PC. i only need it or access to the company website and some light excel work

rickey939 · Sep 11, 2005, 02:14 PM

You can't access your company site from a Mac? You cannot use Excel on your Mac?

mousehouse · Sep 11, 2005, 02:35 PM

Running Excel on your Mac will be a better user-experience than using VPC on your PowerBook. Maybe your companies site runs in Mozilla as well?

Other than that VPC is pretty nice, although I haven't been able to get it to run Solaris 10 for x86

burningwheel · Sep 11, 2005, 02:41 PM

let me clarify, yes i can run excel on my mac, my bad.... but i need *IE* on a PC to access their website. IE on a Mac won't work, neither will Firefox. i just can't access it with a mac at all

"This application is not compatible with your computer. It is designed for Microsoft® Windows only."

rickey939 · Sep 11, 2005, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by burningwheel

"This application is not compatible with your computer. It is designed for Microsoft® Windows only."

What is your companies web-site? I bet I can get it to work by adjusting the "User Agent" within Safari to spoof IE v6 for Windows.

Barry · Sep 11, 2005, 04:08 PM

You need to tell the people at your company that making a website that cannot be accessed by any browser will mean the web site will fail. If your company gets money from the government in any form, they could loose this funding without a standards complient web site. They will also loose the goodwill and busuness of people who do not use windows for their OS ( a LOT more than anyone thinks). 70 percent of the web sites now on line are using Apache.

Virtual PC was a very nice application before Microsoft got its mitts on it. it is now expensive, slow and way behind the times. It uses up way to many resources on your Mac. The max memory (512 mb) is also the bare minimum it needs to run at a snails pace. I would avoid it.

ghporter · Sep 11, 2005, 04:37 PM

I suggest two things: First, tell your boss that if you need to work at home, he needs to get you a PC, because your wonderful (and bought at your own expense) PowerBook can't log into the company site-only Windows computers can. If it's a requirement of the job, either the web site needs to allow ANY computer to log in, or the company needs to provide the computer-otherwise how can you do your job?

Second, start looking for a cheap PC laptop. If all you need to do is IE, just about any PC laptop will do, but from experience I'd say to stay away from Compaq and HP laptops-HP used to make good computers, but they've fallen to the level of Compaq since they bought the company several years ago.

Barry is right about VPC-it is slower and more unpleasant than it should be, and the 512MB memory limit severely restrains it. It's usually better to go with a cheap PC (which may well be only a little more expensive than the retail version of VPC!).

Rickey, there are an unfortunately large number of online applications that really don't give a rat's behind what the user agent says-they don't bother to even ask. Instead, they look for undocumented or unintended "IE on Windows" indicators. BAD, BAD WEB CODER! It's quick and easy and really BAD web design.

rickey939 · Sep 11, 2005, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Rickey, there are an unfortunately large number of online applications that really don't give a rat's behind what the user agent says-they don't bother to even ask. Instead, they look for undocumented or unintended "IE on Windows" indicators. BAD, BAD WEB CODER! It's quick and easy and really BAD web design.

Indeed, but it's worth a shot first before going off and spending a lot of money on something he may very well not need at all.

Cold Warrior · Sep 11, 2005, 06:38 PM

VPC is indeed unpleasant. Every minute a torture. Attempt to switch your user agent or get a cheap PC laptop.

burningwheel · 09:37 PM

they won't buy me a PC since i really working for myself. it's a real estate company. my wife found a plug-in that spoofs a PC and IE for Firefox. i can login to get email now but most of the other things i need to do. how do i adjust user agent?

my wife thinks the part i can't access uses ActiveX

Cold Warrior · 09:02 PM

i can login to get email now but most of the other things i need to do. how do i adjust user agent?

my wife thinks the part i can't access uses ActiveX

ensure that you are not blocking pop-ups for your site and that java and javascript are on.

the firefox extension called user agent switcher lets you easily change your user agent.

placebo1969 · Sep 12, 2005, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by rickey939

What is your companies web-site? I bet I can get it to work by adjusting the "User Agent" within Safari to spoof IE v6 for Windows.

How do you get that to stick? It seems to revert back to Safari after each use.

Scandalous Ion Cannon · Sep 12, 2005, 06:49 PM

It is slow as all unholy hell on a Dual G5 but it works.

burningwheel · Sep 12, 2005, 07:22 PM

is there a demo of VPC? i can't seem to find one

Cold Warrior · Sep 12, 2005, 09:04 PM

Originally Posted by placebo1969

How do you get that to stick? It seems to revert back to Safari after each use.

It doesn't stick. If you have multiple windows or tabs, you will need to set it per window/tab. Once closed, any new windows/tabs will need to be manually set.

Just keep one window open set the way you want, or get in the habit of manually setting it.

placebo1969 · Sep 12, 2005, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

It doesn't stick. If you have multiple windows or tabs, you will need to set it per window/tab. Once closed, any new windows/tabs will need to be manually set.

Just keep one window open set the way you want, or get in the habit of manually setting it.

Argh. Okay, thanks.

ApplCmptrDood · Sep 12, 2005, 11:16 PM

It's like running Windows 95 on a Pentium 1. Enough said.

osxrules · Sep 13, 2005, 03:31 AM

I think VPC is quite good considering what it is doing. I mean how many other pieces of software can emulate a CPU so well it can run the latest OS pretty much perfectly? In its class, nothing comes close to VPC.

I've even used it for video encoding for converting from some unsupported codecs. The only point where VPC is lacking is on graphics because it doesn't emulate the Mac GPU. For pure CPU stuff, it runs about half the speed of the Mac it's on.

When it comes to web browsing, it works fine so long as you have broadband. Don't even think about it if you have dial-up (I mean for it working, not for speed). With broadband, you don't even have to set anything up. I just installed VPC, booted it and when I launched explorer, it worked right away. Not that I use it for web browsing in general.

Now even though it was showing images and things, it ran quite well. Loading pages takes a couple of seconds longer but scrolling the page didn't seem any different than on the native browsers. What I did notice is that I got those silly pop-up messages appearing asking if I wanted to install quicktime and windows updates when I didn't ask it to - just like a real PC does. Maybe that's activeX at work.

I'm using VPC 6 with Windows 98 on a Mac Mini 1.25 with 1 GB Ram. I use an older Windows system because it requires less Ram but I heard that Windows 2k onwards is supposed to run faster because of the memory management or something. But I have had no trouble at all with Win 98 so I'm sticking to it. I think you get IE 6 for that system so if the website requires the latest browser too, you shouldn't have any bother.

I agree that you should complain about it though. W3C standards are there for a reason.

Unfortunately, you can't really get a demo for VPC because they'd have to give you an OS with it. Virtual PC runs the same Windows operating system that you install on a PC.

You can get a cheap version off ebay. Just get version 6 though. Version 7 is still expensive. Of course, if you ever plan on running it on a G5 in the future, you'd need version 7. But when the Intel Macs come out, there should be a better solution.

If you are able to get a version of Windows from someone you know or maybe from a local library (I got XP from a library once) then you just need the VPC app.

Even if your only intention for Virtual PC is for that site, I would still get it. I've found it very useful in certain situations. For example, I don't know of a zip file repair tool for the Mac. So when I get a corrupted zip archive, I drop it into my shared folder with VPC, boot it, run the zip repair tool and extract the contents.

For things like excel, I use NeoOffice for Mac. It's a version of openoffice that runs without x11 so it uses native fonts and it's free.

burningwheel · Sep 13, 2005, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by osxrules

I think VPC is quite good considering what it is doing. I mean how many other pieces of software can emulate a CPU so well it can run the latest OS pretty much perfectly? In its class, nothing comes close to VPC.

I've even used it for video encoding for converting from some unsupported codecs. The only point where VPC is lacking is on graphics because it doesn't emulate the Mac GPU. For pure CPU stuff, it runs about half the speed of the Mac it's on.

When it comes to web browsing, it works fine so long as you have broadband. Don't even think about it if you have dial-up (I mean for it working, not for speed). With broadband, you don't even have to set anything up. I just installed VPC, booted it and when I launched explorer, it worked right away. Not that I use it for web browsing in general.

Now even though it was showing images and things, it ran quite well. Loading pages takes a couple of seconds longer but scrolling the page didn't seem any different than on the native browsers. What I did notice is that I got those silly pop-up messages appearing asking if I wanted to install quicktime and windows updates when I didn't ask it to - just like a real PC does. Maybe that's activeX at work.

I'm using VPC 6 with Windows 98 on a Mac Mini 1.25 with 1 GB Ram. I use an older Windows system because it requires less Ram but I heard that Windows 2k onwards is supposed to run faster because of the memory management or something. But I have had no trouble at all with Win 98 so I'm sticking to it. I think you get IE 6 for that system so if the website requires the latest browser too, you shouldn't have any bother.

I agree that you should complain about it though. W3C standards are there for a reason.

Unfortunately, you can't really get a demo for VPC because they'd have to give you an OS with it. Virtual PC runs the same Windows operating system that you install on a PC.

You can get a cheap version off ebay. Just get version 6 though. Version 7 is still expensive. Of course, if you ever plan on running it on a G5 in the future, you'd need version 7. But when the Intel Macs come out, there should be a better solution.

If you are able to get a version of Windows from someone you know or maybe from a local library (I got XP from a library once) then you just need the VPC app.

Even if your only intention for Virtual PC is for that site, I would still get it. I've found it very useful in certain situations. For example, I don't know of a zip file repair tool for the Mac. So when I get a corrupted zip archive, I drop it into my shared folder with VPC, boot it, run the zip repair tool and extract the contents.

For things like excel, I use NeoOffice for Mac. It's a version of openoffice that runs without x11 so it uses native fonts and it's free.

thanks OSXRules. i don't plan on getting a G5 until the Intel machines comes out. maybe i'll try to pick up a copy of 6.0 on ebay