August 16, 2002
Virtual PC 4.3.2 for OS/2
I reviewed Virtual PC 4.1 (http://www.os2ezine.com/20020516/page_4.html) a few months
ago. This month they've followed up their initial release with version 4.3.2 which addresses a number
of issues with the initial release and adds a surprising number of cool new features.
Installation
Installation of the update over a previous VPC installation is straightforward, just make sure that
you have shut down each of your virtual machines before you do the upgrade, or your saved state
will be lost - the equivalent of pulling the plug on a real PC.
One new feature I noticed during installation is the keyboard monitor driver. This allows VPC to
intercept Ctrl-Alt-Del, Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Esc when a VM is active. The documentation
warns that this might conflict with other keyboard monitors, but I don't have any to worry about. Once
you've tried it, this feature makes VPC much nicer to use with other OS/2 applications and is definitely
worth installing.
I was disappointed that the PDF manuals that come with VPC were not installed by the installer,
they can be found where you unzipped the original download in the Documentation folder. As I
noted in the previous review, the documentation for VPC is very well done and comprehensive.
What's New
While there is an obvious improvement with this new version being based on a newer version of the
Connectix code, there have been a whole lot of OS/2 specific buglets squashed. From the length of
the list in the README, it is apparent that the folks at InnoTek have been very busy.
DVD data disk support is a welcome addition although DVD movies are still not supported. In any
case, you'd need some sort of super-PC to do DVD playback in software in a PC emulator like VPC.
SMP Now sort-of Supported
The new VPC will operate on SMP systems, however they're still hedging a bit in the documentation,
so try it at your own peril. While it at least works now, unfortunately, if you have two CPU's, it still
won't take advantage of them and puts all the VM's on the same processor. At least they're talking
about proper SMP support in the future which is positive.
What about Sound?
One of my biggest complaints about VPC (since I mainly want to use it to run games and multimedia
applications) is that
most sound cards are not supported. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to have improved any
in the new release.
Very Cool - Remote Control
One very neat feature in the new VPC is the ability to run any Virtual PC VM as a VNC server. If you're
not familiar with VNC, here's an introduction (http://www.os2ezine.com/20000616/vncos2.html). All
you need to do is start up VPC with the VNC server enabled, and you can connect to it with a VNC
client from anywhere in the internet. The cool thing about this is that it works even for operating systems
that don't have their own VNC servers such as OS/2.
Resizeable Guest Windows
If you find that your VM window is a little too small, the new VPC allows you to simply grab the window
frame and resize it to whatever size you need. This is a lot quicker and more flexible than the previous
technique of using Windows' Control Panel. Unfortunately this feature only works in Windows VM's.
To enable this feature, shut down your VM, go to Virtual PC Preferences
and Full Screen Mode, and select the confusingly named "Adjust Guest to match host" option. Seeing
Windows resize itself automatically as you drag the frame is pretty nice.
Undo Drives
Another new feature is Undo Drives. This feature allows you to work on a disk image, and when you shut
the VM down, you can decide whether to delete or commit all your changes. This is good if you want to
repeat some testing from a known start state or are worried that something you are going to try is going
to mangle your virtual machine.
Summary
As a free upgrade, VPC 4.3.2 is an unbeatable deal. It offers a number of very nice improvements to
VPC 4.1, seems quite a bit faster, and knocks off most of the rough edges that the 4.1 version had.
If you've never used VPC, while 4.1 was attractive for making it possible to run Linux, Windows or
other OS guests at all, 4.3.2 makes all of this a rather pleasant experience. If you looked at 4.1 and rejected
it as too rough, it is time to take another look.
Virtual PC for OS/2 Version 4.3.2
Manufacturer: http://www.innotek.de
Price: Free upgrade (ftp://vpctest:testvpc@ftp.innotek.de/VPC432OS2.zip) for registered 4.1 users.
Robert Basler is the president of
Aurora Systems, Inc. (http://www.aurora-systems.com)
and has been a dedicated OS/2 user since he tired of rebooting Windows 3.1 twenty times a day.
He spends what free time he can manage travelling the world. Photo was taken at Franz Josef
glacier, New Zealand.
This article is courtesy of www.os2ezine.com. You can view
it online at http://www.os2ezine.com/20020816/page_5.html.
Copyright (C) 2002. All Rights Reserved.