Virtual PC, Linux, and a Few Bugs

By Martin Heller

September 27, 2004

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Last month I tested a REALBasic program on one Linux distribution, Mandrake MOVE. Before I tell you more about my Linux testing, let me push it onto the stack and switch subjects.

Dead Computers

Last spring the last machine in my office running Windows 98 stopped working reliably. It wasn't a huge disaster: It smelled like a fan went south, and after cooling off for a few hours the computer booted and ran long enough for me to retrieve everything I cared about from its hard disk. Then I turned it off until I had time to fix it. It's still off.

I typically have about five computers running in my office, a practice that dates from the days when I had to test software I'd written on as many Windows and browser versions as possible. Currently I only have three really running: a "white box" 2.4 GHz Pentium IV running Windows XP SP2, a Compaq Presario 1.1 GHz Athlon running a Longhorn preview, and an HP Compaq 3.2 GHz Pentium IV with HyperThreading running Windows XP SP1, at least until SP2 downloads.

Several more computers are just cluttering up corners of the office. The 667 MHz Micron Millennia running Windows 98 SE that I mentioned earlier is down until I replace its fan, and a 333 MHz Acer running Windows NT isn't stable enough to use for much more than an hour at a time. A Gateway laptop is completely dead in a corner, having burnt up its BIOS chip for the third time, and a Gateway Essential is completely dead in another corner, having burnt up its proprietary motherboard, which would cost way more to replace than the machine is worth.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004

Motivated by the near-demise of the Millennia, I bought the 3.2 GHz HP box in June with 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard disk. The machine also came with a DVD+RW drive, and Dantz Retrospect Express as its backup application. We'll come back to that shortly.

My principal reason for buying this machine was to provide a test bed for multiple operating systems, using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. Virtual PC is also becoming the environment of choice for testing Microsoft beta products.

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