[Ti] Virtual PC and USB Questions [off list]

[b]

According to Dennis Fazio:

>
>Hi, "flipper"
>
>I have a TiBook 667 (Rev B Fall 2001) and since it didn't have the 
>large Level 3 cache that VPC 6 seemed to take better advantage of, I 
>was reluctant to spring for the upgrade, since I didn't think I'd 
>get that much of an improvement. I'm running VPC 5.0.4. now.
>
>Are you saying that you noticed a considerable improvement in 
>performance from version 5 to 6 on the same machine as mine (which 
>would cause me to re-evaluate an upgrade), or do you have the Spring 
>2002 TiBook 667 with the Level 3 cache?
>
>--
>Dennis Fazio
>dfz at mac.com

More good news, first they announce the 800 the day after I take 
delivery on the 667, and now I find out there was an upgraded 667 
with an L3 cache, what next?

Apple System Profiler makes no mention of any L3 cache on my 667, 
only the 256k L2, and yes, I used Win2kPro on VPC5, and the upgrade 
to 5, and after switching to VPC 6 I noticed across-the-board 
improvement in everything except screen redraw. [And even that was 
mostly notable when running serious graphics/shaders-intensive apps, 
i.e. Games].

I can give you one example: VPC, or Windows 2000, would 'hang' during 
transfers of a printer driver, using the wizard associated with 
installs, under VPC 5. When I did the same thing with VPC 6, it 'saw' 
the .ini and exe files on my CD w/the driver, instantly. Transfer was 
just as rapid as with OSX, no problem.

Also, there are utilities, or updates built right into Win2000 Pro, 
that never even surfaced until I ran the same drive image in VPC 6, 
whereupon they popped up,offering me an opportunity to install, again 
rapidly, when I first launched a 'saved' image. Not too shabby.

The 'drag and drop' between Jaguar and XP is actually faster than for 
me to do the same operation between OSX and OS 9, on twin partitions 
of my internal drive. But that is probably because the 'front end' to 
my VPC app is on the OSX partition...maybe. All of my Windows drives 
are on the OS 9 partition.

I have read reports from software designers, etc, who put VPC  to 
more extensive 'real world' tests than I do. So far [again, not 
exactly scientifically speaking] the griping comes from the VPC 5, 
and earlier, crowd. I found a lot of the 'jerkiness' that was present 
when dragging windows around, in VPC, to have dissipated, 
considerably.

Judgements, about such 'relative' items as speed, smoothness, 
responsiveness, etc, are, by nature, subjective, but I stand by my 
experience, that VPC 6  was a marked improvement over previous 
versions.

~flipper