Virtual PC 7.x : How deep?

It's time to relace my aging and battle-tested Dell laptop and I would very much like to switch (back) to the Mac platform.

I'm glad to read that your coming back home! :) I spend about 40% of my day on Windows and the remainder on Mac. I sneak Linux in on odd moments. As someone with a clear Mac bias, I'm not eager to recommend that someone scraps a platform to use another -- you can continue to use both.

I do need to work regularly in Windows, however, most immediately to complete an MCSE certification over the next few months. That would mean running Virtual PC 7.x on the Mac and loading/unloading/breaking/fixing/tweaking various flavors of Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2000 Pro and/or Server in a pretty aggressive way and in all sorts of network environments (Active Directory domains with and without trust relationships, multiple member servers replicating data back and forth, Virtual PC server as part of a server cluster, and so forth...you get the idea). [snip] along these lines. What real-life limitations should I expect when running Virtual PC this way? Do things like VPNs, MAC address filtering, wake-on-LAN, and related features tend to cause great gnashing of teeth? How deep does the Virtual PC product really to toward full --- really full --- Windows functionality?

We use VPC/Mac and VPC/Windows (many people are unaware of this product) for our Windows software development and QA. We have a moderate level of experience with this product. I am comfortable advising that while VPC 7 reliably emulates most aspects of a mainstream Intel hardware box, that emulation comes at a significant cost: performance and less flexibility. My informal opinion is that VPC won't meet your needs as readily as a stand-alone Intel box will. You should be able to emulate most situations but there's always a time investment in the configuration and then the performance hit afterwards. I'm somewhat skeptical about running Windows Server 2003 on anything but the highest-performing Mac units -- and even then only for modest requirements, say running a (trimmed -- turn off the Windows services you don't need) IIS server. If you are to scale up to adding a VPC server to a cluster of AD domains with/without trust relationship, data replication across machines, etc, you're going to be spending time troubleshooting your infrastructure and not focusing on your learning needs as an MCSE student. Note that I'm hedging on using a G5, given VPC 7's initial incompatibility, (now fixed) as the G5 is missing the endian switching capabilities of the G4, and I'm not clear on whether that netted a performance hit. <http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000302.html>

I also would be interested to hear user reports about other Mac x86 emulators such as Bochs and iEmulator.

I don't have personal experience here. What I've read is that they are more inexpensive and offer less configuration, slower performance and less comprehensive machine emulation (e.g., ports, monitor, I/O) compared to VPC. Again, expect to spend more time here with configuration than you would with configuring a stand-alone box or a VPC application.

Regards, Kyle

> It's time to relace my aging and battle-tested Dell laptop and I would
> very
> much like to switch (back) to the Mac platform.
>
> I do need to work regularly in Windows, however, most immediately to
> complete an MCSE certification over the next few months. That would
> mean
> running Virtual PC 7.x on the Mac and
> loading/unloading/breaking/fixing/tweaking various flavors of Windows
> 2003
> Server, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2000 Pro and/or Server in a pretty
> aggressive way and in all sorts of network environments (Active
> Directory
> domains with and without trust relationships, multiple member servers
> replicating data back and forth, Virtual PC server as part of a server
> cluster, and so forth...you get the idea).
>

Hi James,

I AM an MCSE and I have Virtual PC running on my wife's PowerBook G4
1.25ghz, 768MB RAM as well as my G4 iMac (same specs). I'll be brief-
don't bother. You'd be much better served by slapping down $500 for an
eMachine and another $250 for VMWare Workstation. It is WAY to slow
for the above described tasks. It is this reason alone, in fact long
before the big announcement, that I had quietly hoped that Apple would
one day embrace Intel processors. Windows virtualization should run
quite nicely when the new Intel Mac's finally arrive, especially Macs
of the dual-core kind. In fact, I would expect the same or better
performance than I currently get with VMWare workstation running on a
Win XP host machine.

Regards,

James

On Oct 5, 2005, at 1:47 PM, James Atkinson wrote:

> That would mean
> running Virtual PC 7.x on the Mac and
> loading/unloading/breaking/fixing/tweaking various flavors of
> Windows 2003
> Server, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2000 Pro and/or Server in a pretty
> aggressive way and in all sorts of network environments

I think your concerns about the functionality and hardware emulation
of VPC are entirely secondary to the fact that VPC's performance is
dog slow, especially on processor and disk intensive tasks. (Such as
installing an OS.) Other emulators such as the sucktastic iEmulator
and Bochs are even worse, and are far buggier.

The hardware emulation is excellent, and you can do just about
anything you can with a normal x86 box, with the caveat (of course)
that it only emulates what it emulates. This sounds like a tautology,
but what I mean to say is that you can't install a second NIC, or a
RAID driver, or anything like that. It creates a fairly standard low-
end PC.

While I welcome you to the Mac platform, it seems to me that an MCSE
is best served with a real PC. Keep in mind that you CAN run VPC on a
PC, and have the same ability to rapidly test and prototype in your
VPC virtual computers and easily duplicate/clone/modify your various
disk images. The performance of VPC on a PC is excellent. That might
be perfect for the kind of stuff you're looking to do!

You can easily run VPC for the PC on your old Dell. That shouldn't be
a problem. Then invest your money in a Mac of your choice.

--Nik

I just used VPC on a dual-1.8 Ghz G5 to run test regressions on a
variety of Windows XP installations, debugging a troublesome
application's installer behavior. While building the original base
image took HOURS to install from CD (I worked with a bulk-licensed
BYO-OS version) and running updates, from there it was cake to
duplicate the image and quickly run through install scenarios.

I found performance to be acceptable for this task, so long as I
followed all their performance tips, including turning off all the
whizzy GUI stuff.

As a handy shortcut, install the Windows theme on this page to
quickly reduce the XP GUI to barebones:
http://support.math.arizona.edu/howto/takescreenshots.php

I think it'd be OK for testing network setups, and the virtual switch
feature certainly allows each "PC" to have its own IP address. But,
as has been posted, it only emulates what it emulates. I wouldn't
bank on Wake-on-LAN, for instance.

Also, each PC session requires its own hunk of RAM, and the same
amount you'd normally install in a PC. If the "PC" needs 256MB of
RAM, then your Mac is devoting 256GB of RAM to that session. Each
emulated PC likewise needs its own RAM slice.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback on the depth of the Virtual PC 7.x
product from Microsoft (nee Connectix).

The universal opinion has been that Virtual PC probably is the best x86
emulator available for the Mac right now, but that expected speed and
real-life hardware compatibility issues probably would inhibit or prohibit
even the higher-end Macs from being a reliable, heavily exercised PC
platform. The other x86 emulators available for Mac --- iEmulator and
Bochs, among others --- are inexpensive, but suffer from more speed and
hardware gremlins than the Microsoft product. One respondent even labeled
them "sucktastic," which is a word I am very happy indeed to add to my
vocabulary.

That said, everyone seems to be reserving a teaspoon of hope that x86
emulation on the Mac will take a giant step once the Mac itself migrates to
Intel silicon. Many respondents pointed out that Virtual PC for Windows
performs very well indeed on a true x86 platform, as it should since
Microsoft purchased Connectix for precisely this capability.

Unfortunately, I can't wait for Intel Powerbooks and probably will dump my
cash --- ok, my credit --- into a PC for now.

Thanks again.

James Atkinson
jatkin02ATcoinDOTorg

I have been using an iMac after switching early this year. I used
Virtual PC for quite a while for an application I could find no
acceptable Mac replacement for. It seemed to work just fine if
laboriously until one day I had unexplained problems with the data I
was using in my application using Virtual PC. At the same time I was
quite disappointed with Apple, because I had quite a few glitches
with various things - by comparison on Win XP I do not think I had
any glitches at all. I think for Virtual PC to work you really need
to close down all other Apps ... I do not work this way. So I gave
up on my hope that I could heap everything on my Mac & got my old PC
going again. The net result; my Mac has worked beautifully since it
has been no longer asked to drive Virtual PC ... & my PC application
goes just great , as it always did on Win XP.

My conclusion like others above; (i) avoid Virtual PC if you can, and
(ii) never use Virtual PC for critical/important functions. Its a
shame I know! ;-)

I have to second the comments about getting a cheap PC. I have an
older Dell Dimension down in the basement. It is hooked into the LAN
in my house. Using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection I can
operate the machine from my Mac upstairs in my study and still take
advantage of design programs that require dongles on a PC. Also, with
shared folders, you can shift files between the PC and Mac
environment. The one thing I have not figured out is how to print to
my ethernet-linked LaserWriter from within the PC environment. (The
PC sees the machine, but just hangs when the Print command is issued.)

You might look into getting a slightly used PC. Be sure you have XP
Pro on it, since RDC only works with OS X and XP Pro.

Regards,
Don
--
Dr. Donald C. O'Shea, Emerit. Prof. Editor, Optical Engineering
School of Physics (N120) Tel: 404-373-0035
Georgia Institute of Technology Fax: 404-894-9958
Atlanta, GA 30332-0430 E-mail: dosheaprism.gatech.edu
_______________________________________________________________

> You might look into getting a slightly used PC. Be sure you have XP
> Pro on it, since RDC only works with OS X and XP Pro.

     Alternatively you can use VNC which will work with any version
of windows


-------------------------------------
Jason Campbell
Technician
Psychology Department
University of Otago

Ph (03) 479 7668

I retain a 'headless' windows XP box and connect
to it through the free (form MS) programme 'Remote Desktop Connection'
(RDC). This gives me native windows apps running within a window on my mac -
the best of both worlds. It also works pretty well connecting from a remote
locations through a VPN.

--
Barry