HOME
TOPICS
ABOUT ME
MAIL

 
But Mac users are special. Their OS X Macintoshes can turn themselves into PCs.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
Run Windows software on your Mac? Sure. And you can run Windows itself, too!


April 14, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   Can Apple's Macintosh computers run Windows software? The answer might surprise you.
   Ordinarily, you'd think Macs and Windows PCs would never be able to run each other's software. Except for a half-successful attempt to get Windows to run some simple Mac programs a few years ago, Windows is foreign territory to Mac programs. But Mac users are special. Their OS X Macintoshes can turn themselves into PCs.
   They do this through emulation. No extra hardware is needed. All you do is install a program called Virtual PC. Then you install Windows within the virtualized computer that runs in Virtual PC.
   This virtualized PC-within-a-Mac works almost exactly the same as a normal PC and can run any version of Windows or Linux. While the PC is running, the Mac is unaffected; it can keep doing all its normal Macintosh functions. Windows can run in a window on the Mac desktop or it can appear full-screen when you need it and then be hidden away with a keystroke.
   Virtual PC, which costs $129, was created by Connectix but is now owned by Microsoft. You simply install Virtual PC on your OS X Macintosh and instruct it to create an emulated IBM-compatible computer. You determine how much memory the PC will have (taken from your Mac's own memory, of course) and how large its virtual hard drive should be. You can then install any version of Windows (or any other PC operating system, such as Linux) that you have handy.
   If you don't have an installable copy of Windows, you can buy a version of Virtual PC that includes Windows for about $100 more. Microsoft explains these purchase options at its Virtual PC Web site, www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc.
   I installed Virtual PC on my Apple G4 and then installed Windows 2000. I gave the virtual computer 512 megabytes of memory and a 15-gigabyte virtual hard drive.
   I reverted to my old Windows habits for a few hours and did all the Microsoft updates and fixes, put AVG antivirus on the PC, added a few utilities to reduce the threat of spyware and script attacks, replaced the horrid Microsoft Notepad with a real text editor (NoteTab, from www.notetab.com) and installed my own file manager. With Windows finally semi-trustworthy, I added a half-dozen commercial programs and tried out some of the latest Windows freeware and shareware in my collection.
   Most programs ran fine. I was disappointed to discover that my file database software, WhereIsIt, crashed when I ran it on the emulated PC, but that was an exception. The photo editing programs I installed ran perfectly, and the few games I tried out ran normally also.
   The virtualized PC even has a virtual sound card and virtual graphics card. The audio quality was excellent. I noted a slight jerkiness when I moved windows around the screen, but otherwise everything acted normally. When I had Windows running full-screen, there was no way to know that a Macintosh was hiding underneath.
   Internet Explorer and Mozilla had no problems with Web access, and my usual Windows e-mail software worked equally well. Virtual PC routes its network connections through the host computer using Network Address Translation, or NAT. This adds an extra firewall to the one running on the Macintosh and helps keep the emulated PC safer than most actual PCs could ever be.
   Printing was effortless. My two USB printers showed up in Windows, as did another printer attached to a real Windows PC on our home network. The "SuperDrive" combination CD-DVD drive (and burner) in my Mac became the D: drive in Windows and worked just as if it were part of a real PC for reading CDs and DVDs. (I didn't try burning any disks under Windows.)
   You can easily run Microsoft Office under Virtual PC, but the only parts of Office you'd probably want to run under emulation are Access, which has no Mac Office counterpart, and Outlook, which is still superior to its Mac Office cousin, Entourage. The Mac Office versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are outstanding and work better in most ways than their Windows counterparts.