What is Connectix Virtual PC 4.0?

Connectix’s Virtual PC essentially puts a PC on your Mac desktop.

It mimics an Intel Pentium II processor, letting you run Windows programs without having a physical processor card in your Mac or buying an actual PC. Version 4 of this venerable PC-emulation program boasts increased speed on a Power Mac 64 and the ability to run more than one PC at a time.

Setup is as easy as ever: Just put In the program CD and run the installer. Installing additional operating systems is also a snap, and the well-written manual is a big help. (Connectix released Virtual PC 4 with Windows 98 preinstalled, and Windows Me and PC-DOS versions aren’t far behind. As of this writing Connectix plans to release “OS packs” in the near future, preinstalled with such operating systems as Windows 2000 and Linux.) Virtual PC can share your Mac’s IP address, providing full cross-platform support on your company’s network. Home users can connect directly to the Internet through your Mac’s existing ISP connection.

Version 4 offers some solid new features, including AltiVec support for G4 users. On our G4, version 4 ran twice as fast as previous versions. Managing memory is now far easier. Before, adjusting the PC’s memory usage meant changing the memory allocation of the Virtual PC application. Now you can set a PC’s memory in the program’s preferences (up to 512MB) without having to quit out.

New to Virtual PC 4 is dynamic drive size. Earlier versions made you create a fixed-size drive file on your Mac to hold the PC system, and if you had an extra gigabyte or so of PC space left over, it went unused. Drive files created with version 4 take up only as much space on your Mac’s hard drive as is required to hold the actual PC data. (Only drive files created by version 4 can do this, however. Upgrading users who want this feature will have to create a new drive file and then copy the data from the old one.)

Most important, version 4 lets you run several PC systems at once (as long as your Mac has enough memory to handle the load). On our 64 with 256MB of RAM, Virtual PC had no problems simultaneously running Windows 95 (using 64MB of RAM), 98 (using another 64MB), and NT (using an additional 128MB). If you have more than one PC going at once, you have the option of pausing any PCs running in the background, thus letting Virtual PC give all its processing power to the frontmost PC.

We have a couple of small complaints with Virtual PC 4. We wish Connectix had built support for 3D hardware acceleration and multiprocessing into version 4, and we hope the next version will include these. We also hope Virtual PC will get better at working with third-party system additions...

If you have to run PC software but you don’t want to give up your Mac, check out Virtual PC 4. It’s cheaper than a new PC and more flexible, too.

Shuchat-Marx, Mark D. (March 2001). Virtual PC 4.0. MacAddict. (pg. 56).

Download Connectix Virtual PC 4.0 for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 8.5 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Architecture: PPC (G3 or faster)

Mac OS 8.5 - Mac OS 9.2.2 (Mac OS 9.0 or later to run Windows ME/2000 configurations)

RAM requirements depend on what you intend to emulate:

• 20MB installed physical RAM minimum - 32MB installed physical RAM or more recommended (PC-DOS)
• 50MB installed physical RAM minimum - 64MB installed physical RAM or more recommended (Windows 98)
• 64MB installed physical RAM minimum - 96MB installed physical RAM or more recommended (Windows ME)
• 80MB installed physical RAM minimum - 160MB installed physical RAM or more recommended (Windows 2000)

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver