MS Virtual PC 2004 45-Day Trial


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I've been using it since last year, and even had to open a case with Microsoft. Seems that 2004 is quite a bit slower than 5.2, but it's far far better at multitasking than 5.2 was, so it's kind of a wash.

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Trying it out now. Hmm. Where did the option for installing Linux go to? :laugh:

yeah when ms purchased Connectix my first tought was: well there goes the linux options.... :(

it's so childish: i mean why don't you let the linux option? more ppl will want to purchase it then.. but hey it's MS you know..

so i'm just sticking to VmWare right now.. hey at least they have Linux options and it updates regularly :happy:

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Dont get me wrong guys. Virtual PC is a very good product. I'm just a little miffed to find that the moment Microsoft takes over, they drop alternative operating systems like Linux from the game plan.I suppose it is to be expected.

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Well its not that Linux is supported, they just don't put it on the list.

It does seem totally pointless though, that they would have actually had to have gone out of their way to remove that item from the list - its not like Microsoft is in a position to pretend that it doesn't really exist any more.

Typical Microsoft.. what more can you say!! :(

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Well why would they support an Operating System that they don't have any control over. Makes no sense having it in the list. The program can support it and if users want to use it then they choose other and it works fine. No need to have it in the list though.

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curious.. how invasive is this product to your OS?  I was thinking of installing it to try out other OS's without having to dual boot.

thanks!

Not invasive at all. And it works much better than VMware, well at least on my computer where correctly detects my graphic card (in erm Longhorn :whistle: ).

post-8-1074178387.jpg

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cheers mph. reason i asked is because I installed VMware a while back and it added (i cant remember specifics) networking components and other things that weren't removed when I uninstalled it. Wasn't sure how to fully clean it all up. Ended up having to format because it was giving me problems with my networking.

I'm just concerned with having a repeat of that scenario with this product. I'll likely end up giving it a go anyways! :laugh:

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Give it a go Spyder. It is worth it when you consider the benefits. Being able to install a different OS from within the safety of your current operating system is great. No need for formatting and partitioning saves you a lot of time and hassle. I use it a lot when testing out new linux distros.

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I wouldnt us a VMware PC or a VirtualPC for day 2 day use.

I actually used to do exactly that - used VMware on my notebook for day to day use. I got ****ed off at the beta driver for my wireless card not working in /any/ linux distro I tried - so I went and reformatted, but on a tiny, stripped down Windows 2000 install with virtually every single little part of it disabled, and then ran Gentoo through a copy of VMWare that my roommate snagged from his office that they weren't using.

Works beautifully. Compile times are a little bit slower than running it native, but for day to day use, there's little noticeable difference. I was surprised. And, through VMWare's virtual networking, the wireless card worked beautifully since it was going off of the Win2K driver - and Gentoo saw it was an ... crap, what does it emulate again, an AMD or Intel 10/100 card.

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The Linux flavors I've tried run fine in MS VirtualPC 2004. Two I recently installed were Mandrake 9.2 and SUSE 9.0 Pro and they both ran decently. I hear BeOS5PEMaxEditionV3 works fine too, but have yet to try it.

The only limitation is the emulated "video card" (S3 Trio 32/64 PCI with 8 MB Video RAM) inside a virtual machine doesn't seem to like going over 1024x768 with a non-MS OS. With a guest MS OS (98/2K/XP etc) you can install some additional tools and drivers into the guest OS that allow it to handle the emulated video card better. Other than that video issue I've run into, as long as the guest OS likes a basic AMI BIOS, Intel BX chipset, SB 16 ISA, and a DEC 21140A 10/100 netcard it *should* work OK... Maybe there's a workaround for the video problems I had, I haven't spent a lot of time on it because 1024x768 was ok for the testing I was doing at the time...

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