Panel discussion and demonstration of Virtual PC. Will Price will lead a discussion on use of Virtual PC on the existing Macs and future Apple and Microsoft solutions. Please join us in this exploration. We will install and demonstrate current use of Virtual PC. POM-QM for Windows will be one of the programs demonstrated.

We'll also have a new black MacBook running Parallels Desktop demonstrating how well Windows XP runs on the new Macs. This solution is different from Apple's Boot Camp solution in that it permits Windows to be accessed while running MacOS X with a simple key command. Windows can be accessed from within a Window on the Mac Desktop, or switched to full screen. While Apple's Boot Camp permits Windows full access to the Mac's hardware, since you've really just booted into Windows (and MacOS X isn't running), Parallels Desktop is running Windows from within an application being controlled by MacOS X. This means Windows doesn't have full access to the Mac's video card, and so can't take advantage of 3-D acceleration from the card, whereas when Boot Camp is running, Windows is controlling all the Mac's hardware, including the video card. In effect, you can have a Windows PC running on Mac hardware, or you can access Windows (with around a 15% performance hit) conveniently from within MacOS X. Historically, Virtual PC has taken around a 40-50% hit on Windows' performance on PowerPC-based Macs (because it's emulating the Intel-CPU).