[thelist] Re: Virtual PC

[Scott Johnson]

Since no ones actually said this I will.  Virtual PC emulates the actual 
hardware of a PC down to the chips on a motherboard.  I'm running it on a 
low end G3 Powerbook and although it runs slowly with Windows 98 I've 
*never* had any compatibility problems with any Windows software.  You 
can install any OS that runs on a PC onto Virtual PC 3 and have multiple 
virtual drives with different OS's on them to boot from (setable from the 
preferences).  If your Powerbook hard drive is large enough you could 
have a Windows VPC disk, a BeOS VPC disk, a Linux VPC disk, a Solaris VPC 
disk, a HP/UX VPC disk, a AIX...oh, you get the point! I've also had no 
problems attaching to Windows based LANs either and the MacOS and Windows 
sessions can have their own (different) IP addresses while still using 
the same ethernet port!
     I will point out, though, that you can't boot from a Windows CD 
since their BIOS software is old (I spoke with a Connectix technician 
about this).  And he stated that he doesn't really know if they'll ever 
add that.  I suppose if enough people bug them about it they would 
though.  I'm sorry to see they no longer offer VPC with only IBM DOS on 
it for those people like myself who already have licensed copies of 
Windows and other operating systems and don't want to pay twice for them. 
 Luckily I did buy version 2.3 of VPC and did get the IBM DOS version.  
Bottom line is, I'd recommend it.

Scott Johnson



---- As my grandma used to say, "How sharper than a thankless child it is 
to have a No. 2 pencil."  Nobody knew what the hell grandma was talking 
about...