Here is a look at Virtual PC 2004’s performace. It’s put to the test by using the PassMark benchmark.
Test Driving Virtual PC 2004
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’m a mac user with VPC 5 on my iMac.
1. The problem with the sound card is the same on the mac. Linux just doesn’t seem to find it.
2. Old VPC from Connectix could format disks for Linux. New VPC from MS does not. Tells you a lot about the way Microsoft thinks. Petty Petty Petty!
3. Where is VPC 7 for Mac? Is there anybody who can say something? So far, no beta, not reports, nothing. I fear MS will axe VPC for Mac.
>> 2. Old VPC from Connectix could format disks for Linux. New VPC from MS does not. Tells you a lot about the way Microsoft thinks. Petty Petty Petty! <<
This has been a big controversy and it really shouldn’t be, that drop down list of the different OS’s are nothing but a setup for the amount of RAM that is needed, and nothing else. So just choose “Other” and keep the 128 or up it to what ever you want. You guys really have to stop bitching about this. In addition Connectix didn’t provide anything that could format the disk for Linux. The distro formatted the disk, no the VM.
>> 3. Where is VPC 7 for Mac? Is there anybody who can say something? So far, no beta, not reports, nothing. I fear MS will axe VPC for Mac. <<
Well there are always reprocussions when Apple decided to stop putting IE on the macs as well as thumbing their nose at Office. You are not witnessing corporate war between two companies, and the companies are figuring if they can get the other guys base mad at their provider of the sotfware, the market will force the other company (Apple) to reinstate the products.
———————–
One more thing I think these results are a little skewed because knowing Microsoft VPC was compiled and optimized for the Intel processor not AMD. So the results may vary accross processors.
3. Where is VPC 7 for Mac? Is there anybody who can say something? So far, no beta, not reports, nothing. I fear MS will axe VPC for Mac.
If I remember correctly VPC7 will be released at the same time as the next version of office. I believe they said this spring.
I seem to recall being pretty wowed with VPC before MS buyout when I got BeOS up on a second monitor IIRC to max screen resolution or atleast 1280, just a little sluggish.
When I tried with MS VPC, the thing feels much more sluggish even on a 2x faster xp and it limits to S3 crippled video. Not sure if am remembering this wrong, I lost interest after that and the install needs to be xp patched 1st. Well atleast its in the comp store for $130 but I’l leave it there.
Don’t beleive this moron, I booted Mandrake CD Version just fine on VPC. In addition Gentoo also worked, which was a nightmare under VMWare and getting Linux to recognize all the devices at startup. And since it is a CD you can’t install the VMWare drivers.
hey u seem to be microsoft Zealot ? I am neutral and not getting into all this MS/Anti MS thing. I told here what was my experience. Also gentoo works fine with me on vmware. Contary to what you said, I was expecting things to be much fine to work on Virtual PC 2004(after all MS has source code for their OS) but was disappointed. Few things that I missed out were they do have better support for the Lan/Wlan devices(you dont need to bother about all those adapters). Mandrake was problematic with me on VPC 2004. Dont knw if all of us have different exp. But people whom I knw have had similar exp
I am not a Microsoft Zealot. I am a happy Microsoft User, if that makes me a Zealot, then somebody redefined the term since I last looked it up. I have tried a couple version of Linux on VPC and never ran into a problem, except with sound, but I am not usually using VPC to play games or music so it really dont’ bother me.
Just as a side note VPC2k4 works best under XP/2000 and Pentium 3/4. This is because Microsoft or Connectix built in support for MMX and SSE 1/2. And most likely they compiled it using Visual Studio, which means it was probably optimized for the Intel processor. And I have sucessfully used Mandrake CD on VPC, but that was a binding to an ISO file. So there might be a difference if you are using a CD.
So to wrap up I am not a zealot just a happy MS user. And as for the people who say Microsoft stripped away support for Linux they are just lying and spreading FUD. I have installed many Linux version on VPC (Gentoo, Fedora, Mandrake). Personally I found Gentoo to work best but that was probably because it was compiled for the environment.
OK this is strange. I did an HD install of KNOPPIX but when I try to boot it up in VPC, it freezes while detecting my network card. Anyone else have this problem?
It SEEMS to work OK in vmware though.
I used VPC2K4 trial to run FreeBSD 5.2.1 successfully, while VMWare failed to go through the very first stage of booting up the installer. It popped up the message box saying “something NOT_IMPLEMENTED” or like. Well, FBSD5.2.1 feels a bit sluggish under VPC, playing an MP3 using XMMS brings the CPU usage up to around 50%. And there’re issues with PCM system too, because it doesn’t sound right. I didn’t test it on the real hardware so it could well be a vm-only problem. But I don’t have the sound issue with Mandrake Linux 9.2 or 10beta2 under VMWare. My impression is VMware generally is faster, while VPC has a bit more compatibility, which comes from the fact it can emulate X86 instructions on PPC hardware.
and uses different techniques to emulate the CPU. VPC for Windows uses virtualization while VPC for MacOS uses a JIT compiler.