Customer Rating:  
Summary: not compatible
Comment: This will not work with the latest version of OSX - won't even load. Had to return it. Amazon was great and refunded my money promptly
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow but works
Comment: Response is very, very slow, especially with Internet Explorer, but it eventually does what it is supposed to do. I do have a PC CD-ROM that it does not work with but other than that it serves its purpose.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Virtually-Useless. I didn't believe what people were saying; now I do.
Comment: I really didn't believe everyone when they said it was so slow. I thought maybe they were just too demanding. I thought, I have a very fast G4 (1.42GHz) with 1.5GB of ram, so I'm sure my system will handle it allright. Wrong. It is so slow that I am not sure I will be able to use it for any of the things I wanted to use it for. Seriously, trust me on this: it is super, super slow. I used to have a 300MHz Dell Pentium 2 with 256MB of ram that blew the doors off this thing in speed. When you go to system in control panel to see about the computer, it listed my 1.42Ghz G4 as a 295MHz 686 processor. A 686 if memory serves is a pentium 2, since I believe 586 was the Pentium 1. Also, they only let me allocate 512MB of my 1.5GB of ram to Virtual PC. Even though it says I have an effective P2 processor with 512MB of ram, I still think it is much slower than that in real life terms. Again, just a few years ago I had a 300MHz Dell with 256MB of ram which believe it or not served me well for a long while and was plenty fast with high speed internet. This Virtual PC runs as slow or slower than the first Pentium computer I ever bought way back in 1994. Again, it is "virtually-useless" it is so slow. Don't buy it. get a used Dell laptop or desktop on ebay for the same price as this software if you must have Windows, or just get one of the new Intel macs that will run Windows natively. Seriously, please listen to me on this. I wish I had listened to others more seriously before I wasted my time and money on this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Jumping through hoops
Comment: Honestly, wouldn't it just be nice to be able to use your MAC with all the software that's out there these days. Imagine if we couldn't call a friend because they were on Cingular while you were on Verizon. It is just ridiculous to me that instead of coding all the new versions of software as they are released to be supported on multiple platforms both Windows based & OS X, they come up with this "workaround".
I bought it for two reasons only: so that I could access a stupid website I needed for work that didn't have all of its capabilities supported on OS X- it needed IE as its web browser; to install a software that I needed for work that is specific to the mortgage industry.
In any event, does the workaround work... for the most part yes. Is it slow as hell- you betcha!
Customer Rating:
Summary: In a pinch (but only in a pinch)
Comment: I am a die hard mac user, having used macs for 22 years. I love them and have avoided windows at any cost. I was forced to use Windows because I needed to use a program (Access) that only runs on Windows. The pc that was loaned to me quit.
My solution was to buy and load Virtual PC for Mac. I have a 3 year old powerbook G4. It has plenty of memory and, according to the system requirements, exceeds the specifications. I loaded the program on my mac. The mac portion of the installation was very easy. Virtual PC creates a "virtual computer" on your hard drive (I don't really understand all of this, but it somehow partitions off a certain amount of space on your hard drive).
After installing Virtual PC, I loaded Windows XP Home. This took a very long time. Overall it took time over 2 days to install the program and get it running. I now have Access running as well. The "Virtual PC" works and is functional. It is not speedy when it launches or in opening or closing programs, but it is functional and that is what I needed. It is worth the $[...] I spent since I did not have to go out and repair the pc that died (not worth repairing) and I did not have to buy another pc.
By using this program, I am much more fully aware of why I love my mac and really despise Windows. Anyone familiar with windows will tell you how unintuitive and ugly the interface is. It is a very frustrating experience for a mac user, but as I said it is functional. If you absolutely have to run a Windows program, then this might be a good solution for you. The only other one that I can see in the future is to buy a dual-processor mac and then load Windows natively on it. It would undoubtly be much more speedy, but I doubt that it would be any less frustrating and certainly would never "win" me over. I'm a Mac!
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