Pros: Works very well on fast 604e and G3 CPUs; excellent technical support from Connectix

Cons: Network setup difficult for the average person, IS staff help probably needed along with much better documentation from Connectix

Rating: Excellent for fast machines, stand-alone or on a network; poor for network setup ease

Company: Connectix Corporation

Price: $149.99

I have previously reviewed the PC DOS and Windows 95 editions of Connectix's Virtual PC (VPC). The principal features of VPC are the same in all three editions and are thoroughly discussed in the prior reviews so I will not repeat them.

VPC- W3.11 has Microsoft's Windows 3.11 for Work Groups pre-installed. It installs and runs just as well as the other two VPC version do as a stand alone application. In that mode, Windows 3.11 works as well as on a Mac as it does on a PC and is speedy on a PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 225 card in an 8500 and a PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250 card in a PowerBase. VPC-W3.11 also runs standard business applications acceptably on the original 604/120 and 603e/180 cards in those computers respectively.

While VPC-W95 was a snap to connect up to our Novell network using Network Neighborhood, VPC-W3.11 proved to be far more difficult. I enlisted some help from Connectix and ultimately a network connection was made with VPC-W3.11. The principal issue is that it is not clear from the manual or other written material how a network connection is to be accomplished. I followed the Windows 3.11 network setup program to no avail because the version of Windows 3.11 included in VPC-W3.11 does not ship with essential network drivers. This is not noted anywhere in VPCs documentation. Furthermore, our standard Windows 3.11 Novell NetWare setup diskettes for our PCs did not work, quitting with a variety of arcane error messages. John Malm, Connectix's very helpful senior engineer for VPC, located the necessary Novell drivers for me on Novell's web site and provided the instructions on how to download them on my Mac and to set them up on VPC-W3.11, i.e.

• The web location of the Novell drivers is: http://www.novell.com/novellsw/platform.html
• The specific drivers are: IntranetWare Client(TM) 2.2 or DOS and Windows
• Be sure to download the "Single" file.

For some reason I had difficulty with the Novell files (all 12 MB!) when downloaded to my Mac side even though they were zipped. I got error mesages that the files were corrupt whether I first unzipped them with ZipIt and transferred the files to the PC side via the "Shared Folder" or transferred the "single.zip" file to the PC side and unzipped it with PKUnzip. So I downloaded them on VPC-W95 and transferred them to VPC-W3.11 via the same shared folder--no problem with unzipping and installing them. Now I am able to use cc:Mail, WordPerfect, and PowerPoint on our network but I apparently still lack one or more pieces of software to fully utilize it, particularly its login and "front door" menu features which still give error messages and Microsoft Access which apparently requires a different TCP/IP stack.

Conclusions

As a stand alone, Virtual PC-Windows 3.11 worked as well as the other two editions. This is a major accomplishment for those needing to use applications on the Windows 3.11 operating system on a Mac. Like the other two editions, a really fast Mac runs this software very well. Compared to Windows 95, Windows 3.11 appears to be a nightmare for the average person when it comes to networking. It is no wonder that people who have upgraded from Windows 3.11 to 95 think they've found operating system heaven even though Windows 95 is just a cheap roadstop on the way to the Mac OS. I am not sure why the standard Novell Netware setup on diskettes for Windows 3.11 that we use for PCs didn't work on VPC-W3.11 -- no one is and making things run on networks is a very arcane world. If they did work, the only complaint I would have is the lack of clear documentation from Connectix steering me in that direction. After a lot of frustrating attempts and some great help from Connectix, it finally worked. However, Connectix should provide much better documentation on this aspect of VPC-W3.11 use to reduce the problems that I encountered.

While I recommend the DOS and Windows 95 versions of Virtual PC without reservation, without better documentation from Connectix I can not do likewise for using the Windows 3.11 version on a network. On the otherhand, Connectix did willingly provide the technical support necessary to get it working on our Novell network. A good company stands behind its products and helps its customers--Connectix did just that.

[Back to top of page]

Copyright © 1997 by Bill Fox.
All rights reserved--no commercial use permitted without attribution.

Of course . . . . . . and I am proud to be an Evangelista! . . .