Virtual PC

[Ben Rubinstein]

on 1/6/02 7:55 pm, Kurt Kaufman at kurtkaufman at hotmail.com wrote:

> Perhaps VPC is considerably better on a G4, since I understand it to be
> designed to take advantage of the G4 "velocity engine" (if that's what
> it's called).

I think that turned out to be more of a marketing than technical move.  I
moved from a Powerbook G3 500 to a PowerBook G4 400, and kidded myself that
the G3-G4 transition would make up for the drop in raw Mhz.  Most things it
came out about equal, but VPC was really disappointing.  When I investigated
further I discovered that they'd actually only implemented velocity engine
for a couple of peripheral things (can't remember now) so in general you got
no effect.  But it allowed them to say "VPC v4 now supports velocity engine
for better performance", and everyone with a G4 rushed to upgrade their VPC.
I haven't investigated VPC 5 yet - maybe they've gone further now.  But
don't count on what you read in the marketing literature...


> For a few hundred dollars I just picked up a 366 mHz PC laptop for
> testing purposes; you might find an option like that to be more
> satisfactory in the long run.
> -My 2 cents, Kurt

In spite of the speed issue I still find VPC really convenient for testing
my Revolution apps (and other things).  I have a WIndows laptop sitting next
me on my desk, and it's on the same network as my PowerBook... but somehow I
still find it a lot easier to do everything on one screen, mouse, keyboard
and hard disk.  When it gets too slow I finally switch to the real PC, but
reluctantly.  Your mileage may vary.
 
  Ben Rubinstein               |  Email: benr_mc at cogapp.com
  Cognitive Applications Ltd   |  Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
  http://www.cogapp.com        |  Fax  : +44 (0)1273-728866