Cheap Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 with Windows XP Pro (Software) (Macintosh) Price

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Customer Reviews of Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 with Windows XP Pro

Solid, but you might as well get a real PC
In case you haven't heard, Connectix, the originator of Virtual PC, sold the entire line of products to Microsoft in Spring of 2003, so Microsoft is now the master of these virtual machines. The Mac version of Virtual PC is much cheaper than the Windows version, because in the price it includes both the emulator and the guest OS. You really need the latest Mac to run this at a respectable speed. Pentium instruction set, PC memory architecture, plug-n-play device management, networking components, all are emulated flawlessly. You can even burn DVDs after installing DVD burner driver! But seriously, for a little bit more money you can actually buy a real PC...

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Might as well... and I did
I considered buying Virtual PC, but after careful consideration I went for the other option: A real PC, utilizing Windows XP Professional and the Windows Remote Desktop client for Mac (free from the Microsoft website).
While this solution is more definitely more costly, it depends really dependes what your needs are. As I needed the PC to review PC software, I could not risk blaming the software for errors (or lack of performance) that might have been Virtual PCs fault. Yet, with Windows RDC I can copy and paste from and to my Mac, and have the PC handy in a little window at all times. The display does not refresh as quick as when not operated remotely, but on a 100MBit Ethernet-Connection, I can even listen to iTunes for Windows, and at least see movies at a reduced framerate.
And if that is not fast enough, I still have the option of connecting a monitor to the PC, and see it run a full throttle. The Mac client uses very little performance on the Mac, which is nice.
Yet, a word of caution: I found setting up my system painless, but I say the same thing about installing FreeBSD or Linux. You may want to have a PC-savvy person around. The setup also requires Windows XP Professional, Home does not support Remote Desktop clients.

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IT¿S SO SLOW IT HURTZ
When I first started up Virtual PC with Windows XP/Professional [aka VPC+XP/P] on a 1.2 GHz Apple iBook G4 with 320 Mb RAM dedicated to VPC I thought that it had locked up --- but Windows XP was just very very very very slow coming up. The box says 20% faster but I can't even imagine what it must have been like on the minimum recommended processor. Pull-down menus sometimes take a couple of minutes to respond. VPC+XP/P may work OK on a Mac 2.5 GHz desktop with a 333 MHz bus, but it sure is NOT appropriate on an Apple iBook with only 133 MHz. Updating XP with REQUIRED security updates from Microsoft took well over 2 hours to install. After the software was updated with the required updates, the capability to view VPC as a drive on the OS X side stopped working completely and has never returned. The iBook's CD/DVD Superdrive only provides read-only capability to Windows XP. Also, I couldn't get my Visor Platinum to sync with the Palm desktop for XP software through either of the iBook's USB ports. Quite frankly, VPC+XP/P is just NOT worth the frustration one experiences running it on an Apple iBook. Perhaps when Microsoft finishes the new version for the G5 processor and dual processors are used on a 3 GHz desktop, then and only then, will there be a possibility that this software might be reasonably responsive. In the meantime I would recommend instead buying an inexpensive non-Mac laptop or desktop PC if one absolutely must run Windows-only software. It'll be less painful that way.