The new version of Virtual PC has speed improvements up to 25% faster on Mac OS X, Mac OS X Dock integration, enhanced back-up support in
Mac OS X, improved USB printing support for increased compatibility, video support for Apple’s monitors, including the 23″ Cinema Display
Self-contained configurations; makes installation on several machines a snap. According to Connectix test, optimal performance requires Mac OS X – version 10.2.3 (Jaguar), L3 cache, NVIDIA Ge Force or ATI Radeon video card.
Virtual PC 6 for Mac Released
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cool…
I haven’t used the Mac much, but I played with an old Apple TiBook running an OS/9-specific version of VirtualPC, and it’s speed was quite impressive. It started Windows 2000 without problem, though the actual boot process took several minutes, but the applications seemed to run fine–roughly as fast as on a slow PC, say, a 300MHz K6.
While that may not sound very impressive, considering that it is emulating a completely different processor architecture, and that it was running on a relatively slow system (specs unknown, but no TiBook is much of a screamer), I was very impressed indeed.
I used VPC 5 on OSX 10.x and I agree it is an impressive and useful piece of software. It is quite slow on my Cube, but it works well.
Well VirtualPC 4 windows is pretty cool too, lets me run my fav OSes on Windows (even BeOS experimentally if its ok to say that).
And since I already said it, wonder if new Mac version can now do BeOS,Linuxes as well, that is whats it meant to do, run x86 OSes, I only saw various Windows packs mentioned?
Are the Win & Mac versions tracking v numbers in any way, ie is the Win version due a new release?
Wonder how long they will keep the OS/2 pack out.
What about porting WINE over to Mac OS X?
WINE itself does not have any CPU emulation. This means that WINE alone does not help a lot.
AFAIK there are affords to port WINE to PPC-CPUs to allow running .NET apps on PPC using Mono (WINE for Window.Forms).
IMHO it should be also possible to use Bochs’ CPU emulation in a non-x86 version of WINE. No idea, if such a project exists.
WINE is an API runtime.. it emulates system-calls upon the Windows operating system. This makes it much more effective in terms of processor use.. but also limits its use to x86 processors.
That said.. were any applications ever received for Windows NT for PPC? I heard somewhere that that OS had a recompiler built in which could convert basic apps to run on PPC… no other Windows OS has a system compiler.
If so – could a Windows NT:PPC binary run on Wine on a PPC system?
The only thing that WINE could provide is a cheaper solution. But x86 emulation is still needed, while Wine runs few Windows professional apps plus those who could run don’t run very well. So in the end, I much rather just waste another $200 bucks and get Windows instead.
Of course, I’m one of the few users that wouldn’t need Virtual PC if I was using the Mac. All the apps I use, Linux and Windows, can be run on Mac OS X.
Hi folks,
I’ve a copy of VPC 5 and would be delighted if the speed improvement was that big. But I didn’t see any explanation of what had changed, speed-wise. Has anyone yet run synthetic benchmarks (Spec, Postgres, whatever) that compared VPC5 vs 6? I’d like to know whether to splash out the $100 for an upgrade.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
Save some money and go get the DOS version. The emulator does a basic ATI video card and an Novel Ethernet card (ie: very generic hardware). The reason they package windows versions is that they supply their own device drivers that can just use invalid instructions to call native procedures (ie: faster). If the x86 os supports their hardware then it should work. The program can boot floppies and CD’s so all you have to do is create a virtual drive; boot the OS installer media and have fun.
The emulator is actually a just-in-time compiler. To get the 25% speedup, they most likely made major improvements to the compiler.
Connectix’s benchmarks are here: http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc6m_speed.html
The tests they ran are all (I think) graphics intensive. Anyone have anything else?
How hard would it be for Connectix to port a version of VPC to run in darwin? Seems to me that since OS X would not be running, it’d run much faster.
– Mark
It would be very hard because they would need a port to X11 or make their own graphics system. It is not a few simple recompiles and repackaging.
Besides, they do sell seperate OS Packs in case later on the DOS edition you want to run Windows.
I’m glad 6 is faster. VP 5 had many problems that had to be fixed and was slower than previous versions (well, becase it was running with OS X). Starting up was always pretty slow, but the cool thing is you can save the state of the desktop before you quit VP. Then, next time you double click VP, you don’t have to start up, it just opens up to the state it was in when you quit.
I’ve been using VPC 5, but I always ahave to reboot into OS 9 because it is just away to slow is OS X. Hopefully the video will be faster, that’s the only problem I have, while it does have preetey good speed as far as CPu emulation is concered, the slow video makes every thing feel slugish, especially on Windows XP.
From the ReadMe file in Apple’s just-released OS 10.2.3 ( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107263 ):
– Allows for improved results with applications that switch emulated address spaces, such as Connectix Virtual PC.
From Connectix’s web site info on VPC6 ( http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc6m.html ):
– Speed improvement up to 25% faster on Mac OS X*
* According to Connectix test, optimal performance requires Mac OS X – version 10.2.3 (Jaguar), L3 cache, NVIDIA Ge Force or ATI Radeon video card.
So it doesn’t seem like a stretch to guess that a good part of the speedup is due to some improvement in OS 10.2.3 supporting faster “emulated address switching”.
“Save some money and go get the DOS version. ”
Of course if you already have the guest OS cds, then don’t buy twice.
But I never bought VPC, just evaluated it, my time is up though, and I was playing with VPC on x86. If the support for BeOS was much better (but I don’t expect any more), & if it ran well on an MP box, then, maybe I might buy it to have equiv of 2 PCs in one box.
When I was on the Mac along time ago, I bought and hardly used the other SoftPC. Way tooooo slow to be any use back then. In reversal, most of my old Mac stuff pre PPC works far better under Basilisk on xyz/x86 then it ever did on a real Mac.
So many permutations!
It’s funny you bring up Basilisk. I’ve used it before to run OS 8.1. It was very fast, but not very useful for running programs I needed, well specifically newer one’s (PPC only). It does get the job done if you want to run a Internet capable 68K Mac on your PC and if that’s the capability you need, I highly recommend it.
I got version 6 the other day and it works really well now on OS X. I have a B&W G3 upgraded to G4 600 with Radeon PCI card, 1 gig of ram and fast hard drives running off an IDE card.
Version 5 was unusable on OS X. The speed wasn’t great, but worse was the stability. I could never make it through a windows 98 or XP install (off CDs). The process is so long and laborious under windows (lord!), that inevitably there would be a crash somewhere along the way. VPC 5 was the ONLY thing causing kernel panics on my Mac.
Now it’s way, way faster, and I got through a windows 98 install no problem. Well worth the $100 if you have a notebook. Even with a desktop, it’s great, you can drag and drop files between the VPC window and the mac desktop, have multiple OS’s, no boot up (VPC saves the state of the PC).
or does it run an entire desktop in some window?
I believe you can do either in VPC 6. I always use a window because I have a 21 CRT at 1600 X 1200 so I run the Windows desktop smaller in a window.
Connectix looks like they have improved a lot in the last couple of years since I last looked at them. They have just made it back into my collection of bookmarks.
Can anyone answer this question for me: which is the better product, Virtual PC for Windows or VMware for Windows (current versions)?
I think both products are good. However VPC has two really nice features which are drag n drop files between host and guest and folder sharing.
Secondly VPC feels faster to me. But I do have some stability issues. And would not use VPC in a enverioment where stablity is critical.
Stabilty issue = VPC freezes and must be quit via taskmanager. Only happens when it’s running for hours on a unused pc. I disabled all power saving options and host and guest and screensavers but still will hang at a certain point.
I never tried VMWare yet & only evaluated VPC for windows for the 30 day trial. You can try VMWare as well for 30? days too IIRC. VPC has a good support group and you can & should check how each guest OS fares with it from other users before you buy. Quite a few users in the groups are quite vocal and use both products & are quick to tell Connectix whats better/worse about VPC v VMWare and I think they listen.
I was more impressed with VPC than I expected to be up to a point. Since I was only trying to run BeOS on Windows, which is definately not supported officially by either, it barely just works with some issues, so I was pleased enough. I don’t believe it works on VMWare but I could be wrong. I used it on a 1G Athlon with 756M and the response was ok if full windowed but BeOS is definately better live. I will reevaluate both when/if I get a dual faster MP box. Of course the reason to use either product is if you must have multiple OSes up at same time, or the raw HW doen’t run a guest OS (like my laptop). I think most VPC users on Windows though are just running other Windows versions.
I believe that VPC presents a much simpler PC environment to the guests than VMWare, ie the graphics card and other virtual components are well known generics and supported by most all OSes. During the boot, the Bios has almost no options and passes in 1-2secs. VMWare on the other hand I think has a more detailed setup & I think the video more oddball.
I don’t think anyone would really say either is clearly better, they have different design goals. You can check out stories on both in the archives here.
Ofcourse VMWare can be hosted on Windows or Linux.
VPC host only under Windows.
IIRC VMWare is quite a bit more $ than VPC.
“Ofcourse VMWare can be hosted on Windows or Linux.
VPC host only under Windows.”
Not so. VPC can be the host on Windows, Mac OS9, Mac OSX and OS/2. That makes 4 different Operating systems, or 5 if you want to split Windows between 9x/Me and NT/2k/XP.
Actually, IIRC, the OS9 and OS X edition is the same thing. So I wouldn’t call it two different seperate versions. VPC has 3 versions, “wow”. Besides, they still don’t have a version of the 3rd (maybe even 2nd) most used OS.
Ok I was refering to x86 side of things.
Anyway, VMWare for Linux & Windows are logically the same program although half the code must be different.
I doubt that VPC for Windows shares anything with VPC for Mac except name.
So after I spend a fortune for a Mac computer, I get to pay an additional $200 or more for an emulator that allows me to use my existing software? I am deeply, deeply underwhelmed.
Its not all about you.