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I use VPC, but it is   s  l  o  w  .  Fortunately, I only have to use it for two things... Explorer, (yes, that Explorer) and a ringtone/app loader for my Motorola phone.  Unfortunately, a system that I need to be able to use for work is only compatible with MSIE on Windows, although God only knows why.  It is slightly amusing that Honda chose to do this, considering that Macs and iPods are scattered all throughout their POP material.

*sigh*

I am very hopeful that an Intel Mac will change everything we know about running Windows within the Mac environment.  That, plus the fact that running Windows natively opens up video hardware acceleration, has me anxious for something good...

Last edited by TheConfuzed1 (2005-11-19 1:17 am)

On my 867 MHz Quicksilver, it is unbearably slow.

On my 1.67 GHz Powerbook, it is slightly less so.

You would think that it would be twice as fast, but nope.

You need a lot of system resources to run it.  And it seems that people have different results with different Windows OSes.  I personally think Windows 2000 is much faster than XP Pro, while someone else on the forums swore to me that XP Pro was faster.  Also, stock iBook RAM will not be sufficient to run VPC efficiently.  I ran VPC 7 with Windows 2000 on my PowerBook 1.5 w/512 RAM, all apps quit, 360 RAM allocated to the program... After waiting for a long time for VPC to run, it runs just OK.  I now have 1.5 GB RAM, and it runs slightly better.  But I do think it will run Access just fine, especially if you have at least 768 MB RAM, and allocate the maximum (512) to VPC.

Virtual PC 7.0 was nice to me.  It ran at a pretty good pace on my "Last of the G3 700 iMacs."  Of course, I allocated the maximum amount of RAM to it, so maybe that did it.  I ran XP (which was pokey until I turned off the Froot Loop interface) and Windows 98 (which was fast, but I couldn't print).

With that being said, I then upgraded to 7.0.2.  Big mistake.  The program now runs as slow as molasses.  It also hoses any chance of running a previous version of VPC (my personal favorite being VPC 5) on your Mac.  Damn Microsoft for disguising malware under the guise of a product update.

MacIzCool wrote:

Mystic Cow:  XP does run faster when all of the extra "Froot Loop" graphics are turned off...

How do you do that?

It's in the display control panel.  You can change the setting to Windows classic view (under Appearance).

Last edited by MacIzCool (2005-11-22 7:43 am)

Wow, thanks again macizcool the speed is just about double, even better than when I was using VPC 6 and windows 98.

It is the real thing.  It is just running under an emulator.  If it has access to the internet and it is Windows, you need anti-virus and anti-spyware.

So here's the grey area.  If the Windows emulation has access to the mac drive (as in you added it specifically, not just automatically) it can technically steal your files and upload them to China.  Unlikely, but possible.

Other than that, the spyware parts or stealing your personal information when you type it in Safari - no.  It will only affect Windows directly.

Hard drive speed.  On my PowerBook, using the internal drive sucks, moving it to my Lacie 7200 external over FireWire 400 was much faster.

A firewall doesn't stop spyware and viruses.  It can stop some from spreading (MSBlast for instance), but it doesn't replace virus and spyware protection.