ZogBlog

I've been wanting to run VS2005 b2 for awhile now. While waiting I've been preparing my machine in the hopes that it will be able to run it. First thing I needed was Virtual PC 7 for OS X.

I know, some of you may be chuckling right about now (right Check?). However, in order to avoid getting a USB+DVI KVM to run my Precision 530 (Dual Xeon with 512MB) - I've opted to see if I can coax my Power Mac G5 (dual 2Ghz) to work in it's place. Of course this requires Virtual PC, but I had to wait on version 7 - since version 6 didn't support the G5. Plus I thought I was going to have to buy it... but thankfully Microsoft came to their senses and put it up on MSDN. Once it was installed, I couldn't help but notice the extremely poor performance.

What gives? I have TWO 2.0 Ghz processors. After a bit of research, I realized a couple of things. First, I only had 512MB so running the VPC with anything more than 256MB caused the VPC to be really, really slow (oh and my machine practically froze). So I pushed my box to 2.5GB, restarted the VPCs and configured them for the max - 512MB. Why the hell does it max at 512MB? Good question! VPC7 doesn't support more without hacking their software. Now that my VPC runs with a full 512MB (the minimum for XP Pro), I was hoping the performance would improve on my completely virgin VPCs with nothing more than IIS running in the background (and some even without that).

Unfortuantely performance didn't improve all that much; and the CPU is still CRIPPLED. How you might ask? Well, VPC7 only emulates a processor at ~4x's your bus speed - or so they say. My PowerMac's frontside bus speed is 1.25Ghz, and the memory bus speed is 400Mhz. Neither of which explains why my VPCs max out at ~533Mhz. I should be running at a minimum of 1.6Ghz. Better yet, Microsoft's MAC BU should get off their ass and allow me to assign a WHOLE 2.0 Ghz CPU to the VPC.

And before anyone comments and tells me to turn off a whole bunch of services - let me just say that you are missing the point. Even if I go start turning off services I won't need, I'll still be running a CRIPPLED box. VPC's should not be so fundamentally crippled. Last time I checked, this wasn't a problem for VPC 2004 (the windows version) - in fact I think it shares 100% CPU speed with the VPC (since the VPC merely acts as another process).

To think, all I wanted to do was use one box (Mac preferred) - and still play with VS2005. It all seemed so simple.

I've had the sneaking suspicion for a few weeks now that this would happen. I'm sure we all have; but Chris Williams (also of GeeksWithBlogs.net) point us to this article confirming it. B2 has been delayed until April, RTM slips to September. Up until now, we were expecting an RTM drop in June.

Sigh... Now we won't see VS2005 until the PDC at the earliest. I hope to be there again since PDC 2003 was awesome, and I'm betting that PDC 2005 (LA; 9/13) will be even better. Jeremy Mazner is the guy tagged with putting this one together and has asked us to give him some ideas. I registered mine on his blog. Go read it.

I've been pre-pumping the powers that be in the hopes that I'll be able to go this year. Last time I went alone... this time maybe I'll be able to convince Check to go? Last time I went a day early to avoid the rush (and apparently the odd brush-fire that cancels bunches of flights :-). Last time I missed the party where Don Box (with his Band on the Runtime) sang a special song for Miguel de Icaza (and if you watch closely, you'll see Carl Franklin of .NET Rocks! and Mondays fame playing the drums).