Virtual PC

Slimothy

Slimothy

Veteran
My buddy wants to get a Mac, but I have alot of programs for PC that I want to use on his faster computer. Does anybody know the limitations (if there are any) of using Virtual PC? Is it just "walaa" you have a Pc within a mac? Am I totally missing something? Tim.
 
In my experience, no matter what Mac you're using, Virtual PC just doesn't cut it for video and anything else that requires a bit of horse power. Save your money and buy a cheap PC to go with the Mac. A lot less frustration.
 
Virtual PC is good for word processing, and not much else, you are basically running two OS's at the same time, which takes up too much performance to run editing aps, or anything that requires any kind of horse power, plus there are lots of compatability issues.
 
Uhrgl: I did google it. Safety O and Scharky, Thanks for the simple and complete answer I was looking for. I will let him know. It seemed pretty wierd to me. Thanks again, Tim.
 
one more question. What if I am using a Mac g5, 4 GB of RAM, Dual 2.0 Processor. Will this make any difference, or is virtual PC still not going to do much for video or sound editing? Thanks in advance.
 
yeah, I have to agree. I'm using vitual pc on my G4 and what gets me is the file access.

Basically it sets up a hard disk image and a vitrual computer realm inside the Mac and operates from there.

Which means file IO is a pain in the proverbials.

Which means that if you're doing any kind of real time data streaming (i.e. audio or video) you're in trouble - you have to copy everything into the hard disk image before you start VPC, and then from within windows access the virtual drive off the image to work with your files. And when you're done you have to get back into a Mac OS and copy the files out again. This is the only way I could get the PC program to access the required files fast enough to work with. YMMV, etc.

Bottom line: I do have a few of my favorite PC screenwritiing and shoot preparation programs that I run off my Mac laptop. That stuff works fine.

I gave up and doubled up on platforms for the serious stuff awhile ago. Figured out that a local network with a router was generally better for my sanity...

Cheers
Chris
 
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