Apparently, buying myself an iPod must have planted the seed in my mom’s head that I was a little bi-curious about switching from PC to Mac. I frankly didn’t know it myself so maybe she’s right. Nonetheless, she bought me an iMac G5. Oh, happy dance! Anyways, there are still some questions I have before I open the box and have to be charged a 10% restocking fee. (I’m still iffy on coming out as a Mac person as most of my life I’ve been in the PC closet). One of my favorite programs is not available on the Mac and I’m wondering if one of you kind dopers that is running Virtual PC could check this out for me. The program is called FullSuiteScriber and there are demos you can download on the site. (The full version requires a .lic file which is just a license file that the program references before it opens up. Is that gonna be a problem on a Mac?)
The main reason she bought me the G5 was for Garageband. She knows I’m a musician and thought I would just eat it up. I’ve seen some mixed reviews out there about it. It looks like the program works like a recording studio a bit which would mean I could dump my multi-track recorder. Is that right?
I’m another switcher. I’ve had my ibook now for three or four months and FLAT LOVE it.
I’ve used wintel stuff for the better part of two decades, and spent quite a bit of time on Linux the last 3 or 4 years doing security related stuff. ALL of the security tools I use compile and run just fine.
99% of the stuff you end up doing on a computer are as easily done on the MAC as the PC, but I’ve noticed generally better stability and smillar performance at half the clock rate.
Garage Band: i’ve played with it, but am not musically inclined. Garage band has two major functions: make music the length you want using pre-recorded loops. That’s good for futzing around and adding depth to your music, but I think there are a LOT of people creating the same kind of similar music. The other function is to record tracks YOU play. I don’t have the equipment for that, but would image it’d be GREAT.
VPC is good but needs RAM. If you’ve got the default amount of RAM on that G5, I’d recommend an upgrade not purchaced thru Apple they are REALLY overpriced.
The signal processing stuff I’ve seen secondhand specifically for guitars in Garage band is AWESOME. It’ll make the guitar sound like anything from Les Paul to KISS to grunge.
I am only marginally musically inclined. Meaning, I come from a “musical” family and know how to play the piano (played it more when I was younger, rarely now).
I LOVE Garageband. As a non-musician (or close enough to it) I use mostly loops, but I have added melodies/harmonies with the keyboard and it is really fun. My music has that “Garagebandy” sound to it because I do use a lot of the loops, but I don’t mind—besides, I add my own stuff on top of that so it isn’t all loops.
It is very intuitive, the loop library is incredible (I also bought the first supplimental packaged of loops called Jam Pack) and I cannot say enough good about it. For a real musician I am sure it would be fantastic. I have haunted the Apple Garageband boards and a lot of musicians are absolutely crazy about it—some are switching over to Mac just for Garageband. (Garageband could not be considered a pro-level music app, however, but it’s apparently enough of a lure for many people.)
VPC 2005 is the latest version, it’s got specific optimizations for the G5 processor.
I’d recommend putting the demo on a CD (or taking the url with you) to an Apple store and test the demo on one of their display computers. That’s what they’re there for.
I say this because the demo loaded, and I could import music and play it back, but there was some poping and spitting on my 1 Ghz iBook. I may not be testing all of the software’s capability (I don’t want to make a recomendation based on what I’ve seen thus far.)
They’d also know if there was equivalent (or better) software for the Mac. It IS the machine to beat for multimedia authoring.
Heck, take your guitar, that just might sell ya on Garage band.
Disclaimer: Last time I used Virtual PC was in 2000 or thereabouts, on a lowly 450MHz G3 iMac.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that VPC is not going to be a full-blown substitute for a desktop Windows PC. If you want to use VPC to play games or do demanding video work, forget it. On the other hand, for your non-intensive applications (e.g., 75% of most day-to-day work), it’s a decent way to run your Windows-only applications on a Mac. I was running MS Office on Windows 98, and thought the speed and performance was decent enough for writing a mid-sized term paper, for instance. It also did decent web-browsing, which made it easier to test web sites for cross-platform compatibility.
While the latest version is probably faster, I don’t think it’d be so much faster to deviate from this description. In the long-term, it’s probably easiest to get Macintosh-native applications and leave VPC for the one or two “obscure but essential” Windows software you need to run (though I can’t imagine what those would be, short of small-business-specific applications like dental patient tracking).
They used to sell VPC for $80 with just a generic version of DOS, which you could use to install your own copy of Windows. I don’t think that’s available nowadays, but IMO this was better than buying a version of VPC with Windows pre-installed.
The demo version of the program downloads and installs and opens just fine with VP6 on my G4 Power Mac, which is doubtlessly slower than the system you’d be assembling. I don’t know how to go forward on this, though. What do I do next?
Unless it’s demanding in the video arena, Virtual PC will likely be able to handle this program.
Thanks for trying this. There’s a load button that you click, pick an MP3/WAV/CD Track and select. Click “Analyze” and after that, it should display the chords for the song. Hit play and see if it runs through them.
VPC is dog-ass slow. It’s useless for gaming; and most of the productivity apps you’re likely to run have Mac vsns. or alternatives that will do the job just fine, so Wintel emulation is kind of superfluous. The only people who really need VPC use one or more specialized PC-only apps that do not require high clock speeds or video performance; it’s also good for web authors who want to trouble-shoot code without the clutter of an extra box on their desk.
Microsoft origninally promised to add full-blown GPU emulation into VPC, which might have made it OK for some classic PC-only game titles, and perhaps some old-but-serviceable CAD packages; but they couldn’t deliver. That feature is on indefinite hold, and there’s no telling if or when it may turn up in future versions.
Garageband is a lot of fun, but I must confess I find it and other packages of its ilk frustrating and unintuitive to use without being able to represent MIDI info on a standard musical staff. If you don’t need that sort of thing, Garageband is probably about the best starter music package on the market. Any G5 box will run it quite capably, though it strains any G4 under about 1GHz or so.
Can’t help re. Virtual PC, but I made the switch several months ago (getting on for a year I think) and it’s pretty damn sweet to use. Since the positives are already here in the thread, and I agree with all of them them, I’ll only give my negatives:
My PC is only a 733, but my 2MHz Mac launches many applications much slower than the PC - particularly Adobe ones.
Network navigation isn’t as good. The lack of cut & paste for files is a complete pain in the arse. As is having to go back to the root network directory each time.
Saving files is a pain in some apps - e.g. you can’t see the filename of email attachments using Mail.App.
MS Office for Mac is totally crap, and crashes all the time.
Java and Flash for web run way slower and buggier on the Mac.
I haven’t found an FTP client as good as any Windows one.
I’ve used Acid for Windows, and Garage Band looks about the same in concept, but with a much more usable, fuller featured, and sweeter interface.
Oh what the hell I’ll give another positive: I use Bluetooth with my phone, and iSync for calendar and address book (and email) utterly rules. Also the Bluetooth transfer for pictures with a phone or camera is intuitive, unlike the Windows equivalents I’ve used.
What version of Office are you using? The most up-to-date verson of Office X (with all the patches; can’t remember what the highest patch number was) is essentially crash-free on all the machines I’ve used it, and performs adequately, though it lacks the speed of its Windows counterpart (which is hardly a surprise). I’ve read Office 2004 has some major speed issues, and is a bit more buggy, but I haven’t heard of persistant crashes.
It’s not 2004, certainly. I’ll tell you when I’m back in work on Wednesday. It’s patched to hell, whatever it is.
I should say in addition that I use both every day, and as well as reliability issues, the menus for Mac MS Office are laid out really really dreadfully badly compared to the PC versions.
I’m using Word X for Mac, and I’ve never had much problem with it. I also use Word 2002 on the PC regularly. It’s set up differently than the Mac verson, but I like them both, or rather, I get along equally well in both. However, I don’t do use many “sophisticated” word processing tricks. Just simple documents, a table now and then, add an image now and then. I don’t noticed Word X being too slow. I am on an older G4, and have on occasion worked on large word files (over 100MB). Word didn’t crash all that often for me.
I recommended testing on a G5 because there are aspects that differ GREATLY from the G4s…I did not see the chords after analysis, but I also picked opra…not EXACTLY somethign that’d use guitars.
playback on my 1 Ghz G4 under emulation had some pops and crackles…knowing how good fidelity is important in sound related stuff, I just figured that some experimentation was in order. IIRC VPC 7 (2004) is about 135. (I'm a member of MSDN, a license plus whatever M OS I want to use is already paid for)
That said, check for something native, there’s MORE than enough horsepower to do what you’re lookin’ to do on the Mac side of the shop.
I’ve used VirtualPC since version 2. I have virtual disks for PC operating systems Windows95, Windows98, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux, Windows NT Server 4.0, and Windows 2000 Server.
For emulation consideration, PC programs mostly* come in two categories: games, and everthing else.
For some unaccountable reason, the world is chock-full of PC users who come to the Mac and expect games to run well under VirtualPC, somehow forgetting that the impetus to upgrade their otherwise-sufficient PC’s specs is always game performance. C’mon, if the latest and greatest shoot-em-up would bring a two-year-old PC with average specs to its knees, what do you think it’s going to do to an emulated PC? You wanna run PC games on VirtualPC, think 4 year old games and older, and lower your expectations.
You need to run Microsoft Access or Lotus 123 Millennium Edition or Corel WordPerfect 10? VPC will do ya. Choose the oldest, most minimal PC OS capable of running your apps for max performance though. (If NT will do the job, don’t cue up XP, etc.)
stpauler:
You’re set just about right for running Windows NT, provided you quit out of all other Mac-native programs and just run the NT environment. You really really really don’t want to try to push Win2K or XP around on a Mac with just half a gig total Mac RAM in your machine. If you can affords it, dump 2 gigs into this beast. Or if you’re flush, go ahead and max it out at 8. OS X luvvvvs mem’ry. Give XP at least a gig to itself, same with Win2K.
(If you think this is a limitation of the Mac rather than a limitation of emulation itself, by all means do go and download the PearPC emulator and install MacOS X on your PC and report back. People with blistering-fast dual-Athlons can make casual use of Safari or iChat but they aren’t editing movies with Final Cut Pro.)
There are, of course, non-game PC apps that are also demanding in some of the same ways that games are demanding. You would not really enjoy running the Windows version of Macromedia Director or Adobe Photoshop under VirtualPC and doing more than trivial tasks, for instance. Fortunately, in most categories you can snag the identical or a comparable title in MacOS X native or X-11 Unix format and not have to deal with emulation. (What used to be a major exception — AutoCAD — seems to have lost much of its 900-lb gorilla status in the PC world, or at least I don’t hear as much about it as I once did). So mostly that leaves PC games. For most everything else you can either get Mac-native versions or alternatives or else run it at acceptable speed under emulation.
