Let’s face it, Mac users, we live in a Windows-dominated world. Every once in awhile we come upon some software we want or need to use that they just don’t make for Macs. Or maybe it’s a web site that has some content we want to view, but, for whatever reason, it’s only accessible from Windows. Fortunately, we can have the best of both worlds with an amazing application - Virtual PC from Connectix. Virtual PC emulates a Pentium PC. It doesn’t emulate Windows – it actually comes with a real version of Windows, and will run anything from DOS to XP Professional. The real beauty of Virtual PC is it’s integration with our beloved Mac OS (it runs on OS9 and OSX).

Here’s how it works. You install Virtual PC, bundled with your favorite flavor of Windows, on your Mac. When you start up your Virtual PC, it opens in a window on your Mac like any other application. You can assign it as much RAM as you have physically available on your Mac, and as much hard drive space as well. It will share your internet connection, even if you have DSL or a cable modem. It’ll also share your USB printers and peripherals, your CD drive, even allow access to your hard drive. You can drag-and-drop files and copy-and-paste between your Mac side and your Windows side. Your PC lives in one big file, so you can easily transfer the PC to another computer. And, because each PC is in it’s own file, you can have more than one PC on your Mac, and can even run more than one PC at the same time. On OSX, you can even open and access Windows applications from the Dock.

Sound too good to be true? Being an emulation, Virtual PC is not as fast as a real PC, by a long shot. It’s sufficient for productivity applications, but you wouldn’t use it to play high-end games, or to run something like Photoshop (besides, there’s a great Mac version of Photoshop!). It requires as much processor speed and RAM as you can muster.

You can learn more about Virtual PC at www.connectix.com. Prices range from $129 for the DOS version to $249 for XP Professional, which make it easily the cheapest PC you can buy.

Until next time, Semper Mac!

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski