Virtual PC for Mac

Which is best?

[SilverLining]

Mactopia charges a fair amount for Virtual PC 7. Is there possibly an open source one which is just as good or is it recommended to go with V PC 7?

[bouncybunny]

What kind of Mac do you have?

Virtual PC for the Mac has been pretty much discontinued, as you can now install Windows on all new Macs, either by dual booting with Boot Camp or virtually with numerous tools, including Paralels which is much cheaper tha Virtual PC was.

If you have an older PowerPC Mac then Virtual PC is the only realistic option I think. There are/were a few odd open source projects, but last I looked don't think they were really up to 'real world' use.

[nobody]

If you do have a mac which can run it, then I would recommend Parallels. It is a very good piece of software, and makes it easy to have different windows installations you can boot in different windows for testing IE6 / IE7 etc..

[SilverLining]

G5. Parallels sounds like the one, because ideally I wouldn't want to reboot just to test something on Windows.

However I don't have an Intel processor. Do you know if it works with POWERPC PPC 970FX V3.0?

[bouncybunny]

Parallels won't work with PPC, only Intel.

Looks like VPC is your main option.

[timster]

If it were my money, I would definitely not spend it on Virtual PC for Mac. I used VPC in the past, when there was really no alternative, and can say the alternative out there today blow it away. For a little more money, you'd be able to get a Windows environment that would be quite fast instead of painfully slow.

If you're not ready to upgrade your main system, you could look into a Mac Mini or MacBook with any of Boot Camp, Parallels, VMWare or maybe CrossOver; or else a real physical PC and a KVM switch.

(My own solution has always been to buy, beg, or borrow used PC's from friends when they upgrade.)

[Spongy]

I Concur!

Do not buy VPC! If I were you, I would 1) sell your G5 on ebay, which depending on model would fetch roughly £300 or more. Then 2) save the money you would spend on VPC and buy a new Mac!

VPC was only ever good for basic tasks, such as writing documents - it was never meant for anything intensive such as gaming, and with the amount of CPU that a modern version of say, Dreamweaver needs, it makes it unlikely that you would enjoy your experience of using VPC!

Both Parallels and BootCamp only run on Intel machines due to the difference in chip architecture. Seriously, go and get a new Mac!