Virtual PC for Mac?

[Jeikobu]

I'm interested in the Virtual PC program for my Mac, but I want to know exactly what it can play. There's a PC game I have on order that only plays on Windows, and I also want to be able to use the program mIRC on my Mac. Can anyone tell me if it would support these things? Thanks.

[redwudz]

You would likely get more answers to this type of question in our Mac forums, I can move this thread if if you like.

Moderator redwudz

In general, games do not work well in emulation. That holds true for Macs as well as PCs. If it's text based or uses simple graphics, probably. But high speed first person shooter games or similar, I doubt it. And you might see if there is a forum for that emulator. That's where you would probably get more specific information.

IRC programs should run, though. But if there is a IRC program made for Mac, that would probably work better.

[guns1inger]

If your mac is a newer intel laptop you would be better off having a dual-boot and running windows natively. Virtualisation just isn't that good yet.

[Faustus]

Games are going to play HORRIBLE in a virtual environment.

As guns1inger said if its one of the newer Intel Macs buy a Copy of Windows and USE BootCamp (from the apple website) to run your machine dual boot. That way you can play windows games with full performance.

They do make VPC for Mac if you are a G4 or I think G5 CPU, but if its intel you would want to use Parallels. But none of its good for games really.

[Faustus]

This should be a good place to post this. Mac Book Pro with Boot Camp and Parallels using the boot camp partition via integration mode.

[buttzilla]

First i believe you cant play games just with the virtual pc program. I could be wrong with the mac version. You need to install xp on it. Second these virtual machines are process and memory hogs. i have used ms virtual pc and vmware. The both are pretty good but they do have their bugs. I have used them for linux install's and other operating system experiments.

[Jeikobu]

My Mac isn't an Intel. Does that mean I'm stuck for playing PC games? And if it makes any difference, the game is Ai Yori Aoshi from Hirameki.

[Faustus]

Without knowing enough about the specific game by its stats it MIGHT work provided you have a good fast cpu and a ton of ram for Windows to use. That game does not APPEAR to use Direct3d. But any game that does just won't work.

Basically for the most part, yes you are screwed on Windows gaming on a non Intel Mac.