Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 (Somewhat reluctant) software owner/reviewer. October 12, 2006
Dr. S. LLOYD-ROBERTS
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I had to buy this when I discovered my Accounting/Uni software demanded the service pack 2 edition of Windoze (sic.), which unfortunately was not on the virtual pc for mac 6.1 that I'd already shelled out 180 quid for previously.
So I'm a bit disappointed with the v.6.1 for not "lasting" longer, but that said, the moment that the dratted Windows software loaded onto v.7 and rumbled into life I have to honestly say there were tears of joy fighting to burst forth from my eyes.
Virtual pc for mac is not cheap, but it is a fraction of the price of a pc laptop anywhere near comparable to my mac G4 PowerBook.
Not only that, it saved me endless, often fruitless, wasted hours searching for a pc laptop capable of meeting my most basic computing needs .
So, assuming this software continues to do what it says on the tin, and continues to keep me from the Microsoft OS (as down that road insanity lies, I just know it), then I'd recommend this unreservedly.
I won't go into the countless, hours and immesureable amount of stress mac has saved me from since I moved from being a regular victim/ Microsoft Windows user, but my blood pressure is measureably down, and I haven't searched for the Valium/Prozac or anything else to help me from setting to my computer with a sledgehammer once since moving to mac :o)
 Using Macromedia software with virtual PC May 4, 2006
Mac user (United Kingdom)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I have test-driven this version 7 of virtual PC and installed a separate copy of Windows XP as the OS in the virtual computer.
Findings:
I tested VPC with windows XP pro on an imac G5 with 2Ghz processor and 1.5Gb of RAM, Vram 128, OSX Tiger 10.4.3 and used Macromedia Fireworks MX for testing. Since I work mostly on the Mac but use a windows laptop for some applications, I wanted to cut out the cumbersome and time consuming transferring of files via a USB pen drive. VPC has partially solved this issue, and it is impressive to see the windows desktop appearing on your Mac.
However, even with all the extras disabled in the windows XP OS, such as desktop picture, visual effects, and even settling for the windows classic style instead of the prettier XP design, fireworks was definitely lagging behind it's buddy- a copy of the same program installed on my old windows laptop with 64Mb RAM, running in windows 98 standard.
Conclusions:
With the windows system optimized for the best performance the VPC performed just about acceptably for fireworks, although I was really surprised that it still runs slower than on my old laptop. Part of the idea of getting it onto the Mac was to improve its performance. Even giving it the maximum quota of memory, which seems to end at 512MB in Virtual PC, ample for anything but more demanding video applications you would have thought, it's still not really fluid. Without the optimizations of the windows desktop it would be unacceptable, when you drag a window, you can see it being redrawn and the jagged movement is quite disturbing. For decent performance you must disable as many unrequired features as you can. Guides for this are included in the VPC help.
I also tried the software on my 800 Mhz eMAC with half the RAM of the imac and it seemed to run marginally quicker, but fireworks was still slower than on the cranky old windows laptop.
My conclusion is that Macs were not designed to run windows applications, otherwise they would have been PCs and not Macintosh computers. Though all that may be changing, it's probably better to try and get the mac version of your windows software instead, especially as most of the more commonly used software is now available on both platforms. It is a great idea, and though ambitious does not really offer a solution for me at present. My conclusions are drawn based on my operating system and windows XP professional.
All in all although I can now run the software on the Mac without having to plug in and unplug the pen drive, I expected it to work just as well as the software on the native Mac OSX. It doesn't.
It works February 13, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I had to buy this software to run a statistics package on my ibook which is only available for windows. It worked perfectly although slower than on a native windows machine.I'm not a big windows fan. That's why I'm a mac user but I do think that this is an impressive bit of software. If you have no choice but to run something only available for windows then I'd recommend virtual pc.
 Utterly pointless August 5, 2005
19 out of 63 found this review helpful
This is probably the most pointless piece of software you could ever buy for your Mac. It gives you the Windows software running on Apple hardware, but only the negatives (buggy, incompetently designed, hard to use, unreliable etc) and none of the positives (compatability with practically every other piece of software out there). The only reason to buy it is if you've lost all short-term memory ability, and therefore physically cannot learn to use the far more simple, secure and superior default Mac OS. I was used to Windows. Let's face it, most of us are. But using a Mac takes so little time to learn, and is far more profitable (since it's easier, more efficient and safer) in the long term than buying this piece of junk.
 VPC 7 : Long overdue but worth the wait October 28, 2004
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
Since upgrading to a G5 dual-processor Mac earlier this year, I've eagerly awaited the release of a compatible version of VPC. In fact, after all the delays at Redmond, I was beginning to think that MicroSoft were deliberately holding back on it!Anyway, it's here now (after first ploughing through a couple of logistical problems with order and delivery) but credit to Amazon, they still managed to get it out to me pretty quick! Early impression is it was worth the wait - the performance is much faster than earlier versions of VPC but not quite as fast as I expected it might be on such a pokey machine. I'm also having difficulty getting VPC to remember the resolution of my 23" display but it picks up on my 2nd wide-screen Samsung like a dream. Loading PC software has been trouble free and file copy, using drag and drop, is an absolute pleasure (and fast too). No difficulties with reading and building image files from CD and DVD either! All-in-all, it gets my vote but could still do with a few more revs under the bonnet for my liking. Watch out for performance patches!
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