Markus

First we had Boot Camp yesterday, and whilst good, not ideal for all users, now we have beta of Parallels Workstation a virtualization system for Intel Macs.

Am just downloading a demo to give it a try.

Hopefully Apple will trump this with it's own virtualization software in 10.5, along with Boot Camp.

Markus

Well, since posting this message I've been installing XP SP2. It's very very quick! Way quicker than VPC on a G5 and far quicker than Q on the Intel iMac.

Examples? OK, under Q, it took about an hour to get to the stage in the XP install where it asks you to select keyboard layout. Under Parallels it got there in about 5 mins. This is more like it.

We'll see if networking works properly, that'll be the first real big hurdle.

drivers? you need drivers? ah, well, I probably will, but I'll try using the drivers from the Boot Camp cd, they're for XP SP2 and Intel Mac, so they should in theory work.

KiwiGTI

This really is annoying, i am now going to have to sell my G4 Powerbook to get a Intel based one.

TopBanana

Not according to my theory of virtualization! You probably won't need drivers at the environment should emulate a common 3com NIC or suchlike

Markus

Very true, there is a Parallels Tools image which includes drivers. Sound, Fullscreen and USB support are disabled in this beta, but will be included in the release version.

I'm very impressed right now. Just having some trouble with images and CD's mounting, but their support forum has a nice little hint on how to get real CD's going, and it's working a treat.

Office 2000 is installing. Once it's on, it's time to see if accessing an Access database from a server works. If it does, we'll do a little recompilation of things to get our front end working, and if that works, well, the admin/accountants can wave goodbye to their PCs!