Apple Archive

Panther, Virtual PC 6.1, and Cheap Windows Computers

- 2004.01.30

If you remember in a previous article I wrote about Virtual PC, Panther, Microsoft, and Missing Virtual PC Updates, my neighbor was having difficulty running Virtual PC 5.0 on her G4 tower with Mac OS 10.3 - but it was running fine on my PowerBook with the same OS.

The only solution seemed to be to upgrade to Virtual PC 6, even though she didn't particularly want to. The issue at hand was whether it would recognize the drive image that we already had set up but was nonfunctional in the state the machine was currently in. If that wasn't the case, she thought it would make more sense to buy a secondhand PC.

Since I very rarely use Virtual PC on my PowerBook, I'd never found any problems with it. Yes, it's slow compared to a real PC, but not intolerable. I had version 5.0 running Windows 98 (4.0.1998), and it had worked fine on 10.1 and 10.2, and it seemed to work fine on 10.3.

That is, of course, until I actually tried to do something with it. I opened it up in order to visit a site that wasn't displaying properly with any Mac browser, the Windows 98 screen appeared, and it sat there. And it sat there for a bit longer.

After about 5 minutes, when I was just about to give up, the Windows 98 desktop started loading. What I didn't understand was how it seemed to work just a couple weeks earlier but was suddenly exhibiting the same issues that my neighbor's machine had been having.

I was debating whether or not to upgrade to version 6, and I decided that I might as well go for it. After installing Virtual PC 6, I expected it to pretty much work as-is. No go. I'd launch an app, and it would do its thing for a bit, and then it would quit without giving me an error of any sort.

I figured that meant I had to download the Microsoft 6.1 update, which, thankfully fixed it.

I booted Windows 98, and it asked me if I wanted to update the additions, which actually updated very quickly and without a problem. Finally, after all that, it was working just as it had a few weeks ago.

It seems like it takes too much just to make software work the way it should these days. What's on the CD that you buy isn't compatible (although I believe you can buy 6.1 directly now) - you have to download an update before you can actually use it.

As for my neighbor, she decided that she'd be best served by buying a PC laptop that she could bring to work as well as use for the one specific Windows application she had wanted to run at home. She decided to purchase a used Dell, since they tend to be inexpensive. Running Windows 98, she was able to get her software set up and just connected it to a printer.

It's not quite as seamless as Virtual PC, but it's a lot faster and a bit more compatible, too (at least until you start dealing with installing Windows drivers).

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