Post #1,870
7/15/01 11:55:28 PM
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Ah, the Apple mouse... (a bit OT)
>>The 1 button mouse is easy for wife to work (she never quite knew the what & when 2nd button use)
You've come up with the exact reason Apple went with the single button in the first place. They did test multi-button mice, but found that testers would hit the wrong button and/or not be sure what each button did.
Sounds like you're having a great time with it, though. Be sure to let us know if you have any questions or problems.
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Post #1,874
7/16/01 1:56:32 AM
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Re: Ah, the etc: - Installed Win98 under VPC
Must admit though that wife wasn't impressed
"Why did we buy an Apple if you are going to install windows on it - are you messing up my nice new machine ? - I don't want it on there !!!"
I assured her I was just trying out Virtual PCs and that there were one or two (etc: :) ) programs that she needed that we hadn't bought mac versions of (we did reluctantly buy the Mac Office 2001 set - Open Office for Mac will be for Mac OS X & is not ready yet). She accepted that !! :)
Anyway I installed the Virtual PC software (hereafter refered to as VPC) and it comes with one VPC set up for Dos2000. It went in very quickly & the config stuff is pretty clear & straight forward.
I then created another VPC for Win98 & in the config told it that it had a bootable CD - I booted the VPC & mounted the Win98 CD & sure enough booted it & installed it just like normal. It allows me to run Win98 just as expected. Perf is acceptable (had allocated 128MB of the available 256 to the W98 VPC). VPC allows me to config the Win98 window as 640 x 480, 800 x 600 & 1024 x 768 (which is mac normal). When the Win98 window is same size as mac's you can hide the Win98 window when you want to go back to mac. I ended up setting Win98 for 800 x 600 & that works fine.
It took me a couple of hours to do the install.
Now to try RedHat & perhaps WinMe (though am not sure what I can do with WinMe)
I will be trying a WinNT install at some time. I might even try that Mandrake install that I just couldn't get to run on a real PC - maybe it will work on VPC.
Am interested to see if Win98 can network & print as normal (VirtualPC docs assure me it can - says the VPC can see all the same peripherals that the mac does, incl sound etc:)
You can drag & drop from one desktop to the other & can hide the VPC desktop. Also the VPC sees all the disk the Mac has. When allocating disks you don't have to specify a size - they are dynamic & only take the space used. The software tells you that each disk is as big as the original hdisk.
I think that VPC would be best on a G4 based mac. VPC v4 is said to be specially optomised for G4 proc. Wife's iBook is a 500mhz G3 PowerPC proc.
Cheers
Doug
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Post #1,904
7/16/01 10:03:45 AM
7/16/01 10:06:04 AM
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VPC and Macs
Actually, VPC is a good way to run Windows, since it emulates "ideal" Wintel hardware which you rarely find the real world. Thus Windows is noticeably more stable under VPC than in real life. (In my experience, anyway.)
Edited by tjsinclair
July 16, 2001, 10:06:04 AM EDT
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Post #1,945
7/16/01 4:24:17 PM
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Most interesting comment!
If that is somewhat 'demonstrably true' - I mean ~ that someone has taken the time to say, try to crash BOTH native base-98-load on Intel + identical nastiness to an Apple running VPC (??)
WHY - surely that information could.. be a final nail in coffin - for the very many who have had it with Windoze, especially their licensing - and quite irrationally but Most-sanely: with Billy n'Bally!
No?
ie IF.. you have this One or maybe Three Windoze aps which simply - you must use AND you despise having-to: how much of a hardware-cost premium (+ VPC and other Apple-only additional s/ware) might you be willing to pay, to become Free At Last from the entire Evil Empire?
Linux is of course the direction many believe, hope might accomplish the same end via creeping gradualism, refinement of StarOffice et al - constant fixing of the intentionally sabotaged file formats and other lock-ins..
But Linux scares the folks who most need surcease from the "up"grades and don't know shit about ANY of the platforms - and haven't much understanding of such issues as, "ownership of your own data VS M$ ownership of it all" and related conundra.
Apple should also appeal to those thoroughly steeped in the religious dogma of Capitalism: a place to 'own' the logo AND a place to BLAME - if/when it goes wrong. (Even - a left-handed way to dis them long-haired Commyunist Linux Loosers AND STILL: diss the Evil Empire!)
So IF.. there are such data (re stability, compatibility = demonstrable overall performance of VPC on Apple) - should this not be [ugh] fucking marketed to a fare-thee well ???
(I can already think of two local businesses who might want to run with this.. after a little investigation)
I mean: THIS is NEWS! Ain't it ??
Ashton
who still remembers the resentment generated by the insufferable young-twit Jobs -- now merely an insufferable older-twit and.. heavier. And especially: the arrogant pricing and *service when they thought They had a 'monopoly' in GUIs (all stolen from Xerox-Parc as all know).
(And Andy et al will describe how it was all along - to BE an Apple Dealer. I'll bet that THIS feeling has hardly disappeared, out there?)
Always - it's a trade-off when dealing with the mercantile mind, the greedy entrepreneur: ALL of them. {sigh}
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Post #1,948
7/16/01 4:43:58 PM
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Ideal Wintel hardware
What exactly is "Ideal Wintel Hardware" anyway?
None of the Packard Bell or Compaq or Dell or Gateway boxes, I take it?
Just name brand hardware with brand names on it, not generic cheap knock-off cheapie PC Clones that nobody knows where to get support from as the OEM didn't put their name on the hardware or address or phone number in the manual (which is written in broken-English anyway)?
If you mean that VPC emulates ABit Motherboards (Award BIOS), with TNT2 AGP display adapters, 3Com network cards, Creative Labs Sound Blaster 128 cards, etc instead of the Niehan-Deska Generic PC crap that nobody can ID to find new drivers for, or the proprietary Name Brand systems that are Packard Bell Reborn? Is that what you mean?
The good "Ideal Wintel Hardware" should run fine with any Windows version, and not suffer from hardware bugs or problems with the drivers.
Even if you have "Ideal Wintel Hardware" or an emulator that emulates "Ideal Wintel Hardware" you still have to put up with DLL-Hell, and other stuff that the software suffers from. Hardware is only like half of the issues.
| "I can see if I want anything done right around here, I'll have to do it myself!" | Moe Howard |
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Post #1,963
7/16/01 6:40:33 PM
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Agreed
HW is only part of the story. DLL Hell is still a real possibility. (But remember people are using VPC for only a few apps part of the time. Otherwise why not just buy a PC?)
As for what 'ideal' means, I have no clue. I only know that I ran Win95 for about three years without a single blue screen and discussions with other VPC owners showed they had similar experiences.
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Post #1,979
7/16/01 9:14:28 PM
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I have an idea what Ideal might be.
The most stable Windows 95 installation I ever had was a 486 Vesa Local Bus PC. I had such a beast at work for several years, initially with DOS and Windows 3.1, but I got to upgrade it to Windows 95 during our first forays into supporting Win95 on the LAN, at the time, Banyan VINES.
I never had to re-install it. Ever. And it had numerous beta-issue Windows VINES drivers installed and de-installed. I suspect Microsoft had just such a platform in abundance for developing and testing on. Hence the stability.
Wade.
"All around me are nothing but fakes
Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
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Post #1,905
7/16/01 10:03:49 AM
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VPC
Very nice software. I run it myself on my PowerBook.
Printing - VPC prints through MacOS, so you don't have to set up anything on the Windows side. If you can print from MacOS, you can print from VPC, automagically.
Networking - Similar deal. You can set VPC up to share IPs with MacOS so that no additional configuration is required under Windows. This is handy for a portable, since as you change locations/networks on MacOS, VPC still works just fine.
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