[Radarbob]

Looking at the iBook vs Powerbook specs and on basic numbers it's hard to justify 50% more $$ for the powerbook.

However, can anyone comment on how Virtual PC (XP? Windoze 2k?) performs on the newest 12'' iBook? Let's assume a 80GB drive and 1GB RAM.

Beyond that I'm curious how XPlane flight simulator would run, although I am under no delusion that the iBook is a gaming machine.

[FFL]

key question - what Windows programs are you planning to run?

I'd go with 2k instead of XP, it's noticeably faster in VPC.

[Franz Josef]

Personally I'd avoid VPC if at all possible - it's slow. If you must use it, using 2k and maxing out the RAM is a good idea but expect everything to be slow - the flight simulator too.

[Brad]

Franz: X-Plane is an native, OpenGL-powered Mac OS X app that should perform moderately well on the iBook. Radarbob hasn't said what software he'll be using under VPC.

That said, you won't notice much difference in performance of VPC between the iBooks and a 12" PowerBook (or even the faster, bigger ones). As said before, RAM is essential. Also, a fast drive is helpful, something that no Apple notebook has. In the end, though, even with a boatload of RAM and a fast external drive, VPC is still going to run like a snail compared to even a five-year-old PC. It's really only good at office-type applications that aren't very demanding.

Windows 2000 will definitely perform better than Windows XP, though.

[Franz Josef]

Originally Posted by Brad Franz: X-Plane is a native Mac OS X app.

Ah! It is, as they say an education. It'll hopefully run well then, and better than that VPC crap.

[Radarbob]

Thx for the input so far.

As for VPC uses. I'll use Citrix and PCAnywhere to log into work and drive some PC Apps. So the apps will for the most part either be running on a server or my own PC at work. At some point I may see about actually installing some of that stuff directly on the Mac. I don't expect driving Visual Studio .NET will be fun via my mac; I'm hoping for "tolerable" (see my def of 'slow' below) - if not, I'll just comendeer my son's Alienware PC for certain things; but I'd much rather have it all on my Mac.

I had heard 2k runs faster than XP in VPC but even on a PC, turning off all the "eye candy" makes a noticable difference. Also I don't know about XP apps running on win2k - compatability issues? We use XP pro at work, I'd use XP home edition on VPC.

Slow is in the eye of the beholder. My definition of slow is an iBook @ 300MHz (I don't want to scare you w/ the specs!) running OS 10.2.8 (your's truely). Nonetheless Safari is acceptable. Older apps running is classic are acceptable. Scrolling in a finder list is nightmareish. Mail client is intolerably, glacially slow so I use Eudora in Classic. Believe it or not Acrobat reader ain't bad.