brad's Experience
Written: Oct 02 '03 (Updated Oct 02 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Connectix/Microsoft upped the ante with some great new features (from 5.0 to 6.0).
Cons: Unless you have a cutting-edge Mac with serious horsepower, Virtual PC won't run worth anything.
The Bottom Line: Most Macs simply don't have the hardware horsepower to run a Windows 2000/XP emulator. It just isn't practical. The experience is overwhelmingly slow. I would avoid it.
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| brad's Full Review: Connectix Virtual PC 6 Full Version (P013769) |
Greetings. How is everybody doing today?
I'm here to discuss the Virtual PC experience on the Macintosh computer. Specifically, this review is on the latest available edition, Microsoft Virtual PC 6.1 for Mac OS X 10.2.3 or later.
Before I review my experience with this piece of software, it is entirely necessary to put the experience into proper context. How am I running this software?
- 17" Widescreen iMac
- 800 megahertz G4 processor; 133 bus speed
- 1.0 gigabyte of SDRAM (1024 megs - maximum capacity for this machine)
- Mac OS X 10.2.6
- Windows 2000 as the Guest Operating System
Before I begin, a brief preface as to why I wanted to run Windows on my Mac. I wanted to run Windows on my Mac because I couldn't run KaZaA, mainly, and because I wanted the flexibility of being able to run certain, other, Windows-exclusive applications. The Mac, inherently, is limiting, when it comes to third party software.
So I bought Connectix's Virtual PC 5.0. About four months later, Connectix came out with an upgrade, to 6.0, promising a lot of new features and enhancements. Not long after that, Microsoft swooped in and bought Connectix's Virtual PC line of software. Microsoft soon released a minor upgrade, which essentially amounted to installing MS logos, re-branding the line, and linking support to MS's website. The update was free to 6.0 users, so I updated.
That's where I'm at now.
How's my Macintosh Virtual PC experience?
It stinks.
It really isn't good for much of anything. For one thing, the Mac is slow enough without running a whole other operating system emulator (essentially, running one fully functional OS on top of another). Both Mac OS X and Windows 2000 are rather hefty OSs in their own rights, so running them simultaneously, with the disclosed hardware specs, just isn't practical.
It's unfortunate. It would be nice to run Windows on top of Mac, just for the sake of fooling around with a few Windows applications. I like to experiment. If not impossible, it is difficult to do anything productive within the Virtual PC emulator on the Mac.
Let me back up a bit. Let's say I have a G5 processor, or even one of the newer G4s, with a faster bus, bigger level 2 cache, and faster processor. Virtual PC might work. Let me assume this just for a bit, as I talk about the setup and general features of Virtual PC.
The problem isn't at all with Virtual PC. I'm all but convinced of this. I read somewhere, from a rather credible source, and unfortunately I don't remember where, that Virtual PC effectively runs at half of whatever your Mac's processor speed is. In my case, I'm running Windows 2000 on a 400 megahertz processor (not to mention the heavily shared RAM). It's pretty obvious that Windows 2000 won't run on a 400 megahertz box.
Again, let me put that aside.
Setting up Virtual PC is a cinch. I was greatly impressed with the out of the box experience. Yeah, there is a series of serial numbers you have to key in to ultimately get the Windows OS up and running, but that's understandable. The interface is nice and clean. It's very easy to configure things like allocated system memory, sharing virtual drives and folders between the Windows OS and Mac, tweaking preferences to optimize performance - including functionality of external devices.
Some of this is part of the installation, done automatically, but a lot of it is easily accessible by launching Virtual PC, and from there, editing your preferences before you launch Windows.
Once Windows is launched, it's pretty much Windows on top of Mac from there. You'll see a Mac Window taking up the entire screen except for the above Mac menu bar. Within the Mac Window is the Windows OS. From there, you basically run Windows just as you would any regular Windows-only box.
Installation of the Windows OS goes exactly like you would install a new copy of Windows on an empty box. You're prompted just like you would be if you were installing a fresh version of the OS on an empty box. Everything from the point of initially getting the Virtual PC software on the Mac, is basically running Windows as you would on a true Windows machine.
One big beef: Virtual PC DOES NOT support writeable optical drives. That's right - even if your Mac has a built-in SuperDrive, or simply a built-in CD-RW drive, the Virtual PC Windows will only allow you functionality of a CD-ROM drive. I don't know if installing an external, FireWire burner drive would work, but I'm doubting it. According to Connectix's old website, and Microsoft's new support site for Virtual PC, writeable optical drives are not supported.
I tried to run my copy of DVD X Copy on Virtual PC in hopes of using the SuperDrive. I bought DVD X Copy just in case it gets taken off the shelf for legal reasons - even though I don't have a DVD burner, aside from the one in my Mac.
Beyond what I've said, Windows runs like Windows, inside of Virtual PC. Installing software - same thing. Just pop any CD-ROMs into the Mac drive and the running Windows will pick up the disc and run it in auto mode. Even installing hardware doesn't seem to be a problem. I wanted to connect a Samsung laser printer on another Windows computer on our network. Popped the drivers disc into the Mac, Windows picked it up, I installed it on the Virtual Windows, and I did a demo print. No worries.
. . .
I hate to break it to you, but I've been sugar coating the whole Virtual PC experience. Before I described that experience to you, I told you to pretend that I was running a more powerful machine - a G5 or a souped-up G4. If you're not running one of the cutting edge Mac processors, I would not even consider buying Virtual PC for Mac. If you want to run Windows applications, buy a $500 Windows box.
The whole system bogs down. It's unbearable. Seriously. You won't be able to tolerate it. It's like running Windows XP on 32 megs of system RAM. It's almost impossible. You WILL run into error prompts that tell you that the system is out of memory and must be shut down.
Bottom line, you just can't do anything productive with this software. And as I said, it has little to do with Microsoft or Connectix. Their software is fine. I love it. I think if I had a powerful enough Mac computer, my Virtual PC would run great. I'm afraid, though, that it's gonna take one heck of a Mac to run Virtual PC with Windows 2000 or XP, ON TOP OF Mac OS X. Again, those are two heavy-duty operating systems, and you have to remember that you're running them at the same time.
I could go further into some of the finer details of how Virtual PC interacts with the host Mac OS. There's plenty to talk about there. A lot of it is interesting. Virtual PC is some very creative software. In theory, you can do a tremendous amount of things with it, and do most or all of the Windows stuff, if you only had the horsepower. That's the problem, and that being the case, I'm not going to go much further into the details.
Virtual PC 6.0 is advertised as being significantly faster than 5.0 - allowing for the guest OS (Windows) to run significantly faster on the host - Mac. I didn't notice a significant change. Maybe a bit. Some of the other features they advertised, as part of the upgrade, were realized. For example, you can now place Windows-native applications in the Mac dock, and have one-click launching of those applications, rather than having to go thru the process of launching Virtual PC, then launching Windows, etc. It's also easier to share drives and figure out how to do all that stuff. For beginners, I think this is important.
The reason I'm writing this review, however, is to point out, overwhelmingly, that while the concept of running Windows on a Mac is brilliant in theory, in PRACTICE, it doesn't work. It's so bad that you may as well not bother. The only way I would recommend Virtual PC for Mac is if you're really desperate to [try to] run a Windows app on your Mac, and if you think your Mac can handle the needed horsepower. Maybe the newest Macs can handle Virtual PC. I don't know. I can tell you that it doesn't work on my machine.
Although my G4 is only running at 800 megahertz, I do have a full gig of RAM. My machine still isn't far off the pace for high-end Macs.
I would be wary of Virtual PC for Mac. Only in certain circumstances do I recommend it. In general, I recommend buying a separate, dedicated Windows computer to run your Windows applications.
Yours, brad.
Recommended:
No
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Member: Brad Engelmann
Location: Helen Township, MN
Reviews written: 161
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