Macs Only's Review: Virtual PC 2.0

version 2.01

Company: Connectix Corporation

Price: $149 including Windows 95, $49 PC-DOS only, $35 Upgrade from Version 1.0

Pros: Increased speed, excellent Mac/PC sides integration, improved multimedia handling, excellent documentation.

Cons: Fast-paced, complex games still out of the question

Rating: Excellent, 4+ out of 5

Virtual PC 2.0 (VPC) shipped in late March. VPC 2.0 is the second edition, of course, of the excellent Windows/DOS emulation application from Connectix, Inc. VPC runs Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 3.x, DOS, O/S2 and even NeXT's OPENSTEP on a properly configured Power Macintosh. When Windows 98 comes out, VPC 2.0 will run that too according to Connectix. Macs Only! favorably reviewed all three versions of Virtual PC 1.0: PC-DOS, Windows 3.11 and Windows 95. Therefore, this review will be limited to the changes included in version 2.0. However, before this review was completed, Connectix released a maintenance updater v2.01 so this review covers the latest updated version. The upgrade version was provided by Connectix for this review.

What's New?

There are a bunch but the principal new features are:

Faster -- Connectix claims that the new version is up to 40% faster than version 1.0 (or 1.01). This due to emulating the S3 Trio 32/64 video card with 4 MB VRAM and numerous emulation engine optimizations.

Supports Drag and Drop File Transfers -- To move files from the Mac side to the PC side in version 1.0, a shared folder had to be created. Then files were placed in the shared folder on the Mac side and removed for use on the PC side and the reverse. This was rather awkward but it worked very well. In version 2.0, one simply drags a file from the Mac side to the VPC window and drops it--no shared folder needed to transfer files between the Mac and the virtual PC.

Supports Copy and Paste between the Mac and PC sides.

Long File Names Supported.

Game Support Enhanced -- Supports VESA 2.0 video standard for broader game compatibility. Video games that run on 3Dfx Voodoo 3D graphics acceleration cards should be supported if one has a 3Dfx video card like Techworks Power3D or possibly Village Tronic's 3D Overdrive. There are also DirectX and sound enhancements.

Supports PDA's -- Personal Data Assistants like the Palm Pilot can now be synchronized with your Mac on the PC side.

Installation and Set Up

The upgrade came in a flat pack, with a CD and a 38 page "Addendum for Version 2.0." Installing the upgrade was a snap. First insert the CD and double click the VPC 2.0 Upgrader. Find your old VPC 1.0 and click "Upgrade" and that's it for VPC. Updating PC-DOS is almost as easy. Updating Windows 95 and installing the new 3Dfx drivers is a bit more lengthy but not difficult. I did it right the first time in a few minutes by following the easily read and understood, step-by-step instructions.

The "Preferences" are a bit different because of the new features. The improved video support allows up to 4 MB of VRAM instead of only 2 MB to allow a larger Windows 95 desktop and more colors. The Windows 95 desktop covers my entire 19" screen at 640x480 with both version 1.0 (set at 1 MB) and 2.0 (set at 4 MB) but 2.0 at 4 MB now covers most of my 21" screen at 800x600. The addition VRAM allows millions of colors at 1152x864 and thousands of colors at 1600x1200. The serial port has a checkbox for non-modem devices like a PDA. Finally, there is a new preference for enabling Pentium MMX emulation to improve multimedia performance. The rest is the same as version 1.0.

Use

The computers that I ran both VPC 1.0 and 2.0 on are configured as follows:

Apple PowerMac 8500

• PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 225 MHz 604e CPU card (running at 250 MHz with a 50 MHz system bus setting)
• 1 MB RapidCache
• 48 MB RAM
• 4 MB VRAM
• Internal 8500 stock video
• 21" Hitachi monitor
• Mac OS 8.1, Virtual Memory on, LibmotoSH on

Apple PowerMac 9600

• PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250 MHz 1 MB backside cache at 1:1 (running at 289 MHz with a 52.5 MHz system bus setting)
• 128 MB RAM
• 12 MB VRAM
• MacPicasso 540 with 3D Overdrive 3Dfx Graphics Accelerator
• 19" Digital Research Technologies monitor
• Mac OS 8.1, Virtual Memory on, LibmotoSH on

I had planned to run tests on my PowerBase 180 and PowerBook 3400/180 but a new security measure to prevent piracy of VPC 2.0 kept me from using the copy of VPC 2.0 on my SyQuest SyJet cartridge on those computers. I installed VPC 2.0 on the SyJet via my 9600 but when I clicked on the VPC 2.0 application, I got an error message saying that I had to reinstall VPC 2.0 from the master CD. According to Connectix, this is overcome by a simple custom install of just the application but I've run out of time to post this review. I will update this review with VPC 2.0 experience on the PowerBase and PowerBook at a later date [See my VPC 1.0 reviews noted in the introduction for details on them].

Speed Performance: Connectix provided BYTEmarks of 1.92 for the Processor (Integer) and 0.85 for Floating Point (decimal) calculations running VPC 2.0/Windows 95 on an Apple PowerMac 266 MHz G3. These benchmarks are relative to a 90 MHz Dell Pentium which show the VPC/G3 combination to be nearly twice as fast on most routine processing and nearly as fast on mathematical processing like video.

I downloaded a copy of BYTEmark for Windows 95 (actually several copies) to run the tests myself on VPC 1.0 and 2.0 on my 9600 with 128 MB RAM, a PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250/250/1 MB CPU card and a MacPicasso 540 with 3D Overdrive graphics accelerator. Unfortunately, just as the application finished and displayed the results it quit. I tried three different downloaded copies (two on the Mac side and one on the PC side) and they all quit at the finish line -- I don't have a clue why. Before it finishes and displays the summary scores, BYTEmark lists the results of the individual ten tests. With one exception, the Fourier test, the scores were some 10-20% less than Connectix provided. The Fourier test score was some 20-30% higher.

The table below provides some application launch times to give a feel for the speed for the two versions.

Computer	Action	VPC 1.0 (sec)	VPC 2.0 (sec)	Improvement (%)
8500-225 604e
Launch Win 95	60	45	+25
Launch cc:Mail	10	8	+20
Reload SiteLink	30	26	+13
9600-250 G3
Launch Win 95	38	35	+8
Launch MS Works	11	8	+27
3400-180 603e
Launch Win 95	138	78	+43
Launch cc:Mail	19	14	+26
Launch WordP 6.1	30	23	+23

The speed of VPC 2.0 is indeed increased over that of VPC 1.0 for those operations tested. The speed increase is significant. The "Reload SiteLink" timing measured the time to download, after clicking "reload", the large QuickClick table on SiteLink that shows the "popularity" (as measured by click-throughs in the index page) of about 200 Mac web sites.

Integration: I tried a number of file drag-and-drop operations between the Mac and PC sides using various Mac and Windows files. It worked first time every time, just as advertised--no problems were encountered. This is a time-saving convenience since large zipped Windows files can be more quickly downloaded to the desktop on the Mac side and simply dragged and dropped in the PC window and decoded there. One does not have to change the location of the saved file in one's browser nor use the intermediary steps involved with the shared folder routine of VPC 1.0.

Copy-and-paste using the clipboard also worked perfectly. I copied text and JPEG graphics between Word 98 for the Mac and MS Works on VPC 2.0 Windows 95 with no problems. One just has to remember that the Mac command-c (copy) and command-v (paste) keyboard shortcuts do not work in VPC 2.0 Windows 95.

Large file names were preserved in each of these operations. The Mac/Windows integration is excellent.

Game Enhancements: We're not a big-time gamers so there aren't lots of PC games sitting around to try. We're mostly a Mac family as well so those that we do have are Mac versions. I did try out two games, one that did not work fast enough with VPC 1.0 (MicroSoft Flight Simulator 98) on the 9600/G3 and one (Myth The Fallen Lords is a hybrid CD and 3Dfx-supported) that I did not have when I reviewed the various VPC 1.0 versions. MS Flight Simulator 98 works on VPC 2.0 but it is really too slow to be enjoyable. Myth is a strategy game with terrifically detailed graphics. It worked fine using software acceleration. However, I couldn't get it to work at all with 3Dfx acceleration on my Village Tronic 3D Overdrive card. Later I found out that according to Connectix, VPC 2.0 will not work with the MacPicasso 3D Overdrive. The documentation claims Tomb Raider II, Frogger 3D, TigerShark, Andretti Racing and Jedi Knight are playable with 3Dfx. Of course, the DOS games included with PC-DOS version of VPC worked as well or better with VPC 2.0. I do not think fast-paced 3Dfx games like Quake II will work well but I haven't tried it.

Networks: My 8500 was connected to a Novell Netware LAN with WAN and internet connections. VPC 1.0 and 2.0 both worked well on the network with either Lotus' cc:Mail 6, 7 and 8, server-based Windows applications like WordPerfect or the internet. Right after upgrading to VPC 2.0 we moved to a Windows NT 4.0 server. Reconnecting to the new network server was a piece of cake, though certainly not as easy as using the Chooser on the Mac side. On the NT server, Lotus cc:Mail 8, Corel Suite 8 and the internet connection all work as well as before.

Conclusions

Connectix clearly has a continuing winner with Virtual PC 2.0 (I used the 2.01 upgrade for everything in the review). It is much better with increased speed, integration and game support, although I was unable to confirm the new 3Dfx support feature myself. I am especially impressed with the new integration features. A G3 CPU really makes a difference, even in comparison with a fast, accelerated 604e CPU. However, for most business applications and games that are not particularly fast-paced, Virtual PC works wonders freeing almost any Mac user from the necessity of using a Wintel box. As more and more Mac users convert to G3 CPU's and as the G3's get faster and faster, the future of Virtual PC only gets more promising.

Copyright © 1998 by Bill Fox.
All rights reserved--no commercial use permitted without attribution.

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