Virtual PC on a 1.33GHz powerbook

[gentobu]

Has anyone here tried running the latest version of Virtual PC on a powerbook? Im planning on getting a powerbook soon, however there are still a few windows only programs I would like to run (Visual studio and the TIGCC IDE), so I want to know if they are going to be unbearably slow when I run them on virtual pc. Thanks.

 

[Kipper]

I don't know how much more VPC is streamlined then when Connectix produced it, but I know from a few years ago that Virtual PC was a good way to turn a 450 MHz G4 into a glorified 486 or Pentium. Likely that it is the same - think about it - you're running OS X with all of its stuff on the computer, and simultaneously emulating ANOTHER large operating system on top of that running its own processes.

 

[jdogg707]

I have heard if you are going to run it, a lot of RAM has to be the way to go. VPC6 has been said to turn a 1.5GHZ PB G4 into a 600MHZ Pentium II processor. VPC7 is supposed to be a lot faster, have native support for graphics cards, and offer a lot of new features. Microsoft said it will be out this fall. I am in the same boat as you are as far as Visual Studio goes, since I do a lot of VB.Net and C#.Net for my classes, but have been afraid to invest the cash because of the speed hit.

 

[gentobu]

Thanks for the replies. I was able to try out virtual pc on a 700MHz iBook and it took about an hour and a half to install windows xp, however once that was done, virtual pc performed better than I thought it would. The only thing is that you only use one program at a time or else it gets really sluggish. I think I'm going to take a trip down to the local Apple store and see if they will demo it for me on a G4 powerbook.

 

[Hallis]

Ive used virtual PC 5 on a 1ghz 17" powerbook g4 with a gig of ram and it still ran like a turd, If running windows was that important id invest a tiny bit more money, not biu VPC, and instead buy a slim lightweight intel or AMD based notebook used off of ebay or the forums here.

 

[Jigglelicious]

Just thought you should know, but Win2000 performs abouat 2x faster than WinXP in Virtual PC. Its still slow, but might make the difference between an unbearable experience and a tolerable one.