Exclusive review of Guest PC with screenshots

For those who have never heard of it, Guest PC is a new PC emulator by Lismore Software Systems (the makers of "Blue Label Power Emulator"). The emulation world has seen plenty of vaporware announcements in the last few years while Microsoft Virtual PC was the only PC emulator to remain alive. So we found it was interesting to take a look at this piece of software and tell you if it is really functional, as the Lismore Software Systems website claims. The good news, is that it is not vaporware and that this program not only does exist but also runs quite fine and is pretty easy to use.

The first launch of the application brings you an assistant window asking you which OS you would like to install, how much hard disk space and how much RAM you want your virtual computer to have. You may choose to specify or not the product key of the Windows operating system you would like to install. The assistant tries to guess which minimal configuration you need for any of the operating systems you have chosen to install. For example, hard disk space of 4Gb and 128Mb of RAM is the standard configuration the assistant selects when you want install Windows 2000 on it.

When you create a virtual PC configuration with a virtual hard disk, the hard disk initially takes no space while the whole configuration takes a dozen megabytes. The size of the virtual configuration then grows with the programs and documents you install in the PC environment. On the second launch, a PC selector appears instead of the initial assistant window. It allows you to select which virtual PC you want to use and start it. Preferences are also available through the application menu but they are very limited as you can only change the amount of RAM you want Guest PC to allow for the virtual PC.

Once the virtual PC is created, the PC environment starts and a DOS screen asks you to insert an operating system installation CD. We thought trying Windows 2000 was the best choice to test Guest PC, we believe Windows 2000 is the most appropriate Windows version for emulation, unless you need any of Windows XP's features. An iMac 1Ghz with 1GB of RAM was used for the tests, which were done by one of our sources, who also provided us the screenshots.

The system installation took about one hour and a half - it's more than the time it takes to install Windows 2000 on Virtual PC (about one hour). Boot time was pretty similar to Virtual PC's. Overall speed is better than what we had expected, it is comparable to older versions of Virtual PC, let's say that Guest PC is about 25% slower than Virtual PC 7 though.

Like Virtual PC, Guest PC offers the option to run the PC in full screen or windowed mode. Windowed mode shows the PC environment in a window alongside other Mac OS X windows but there is no integration between the Mac and the PC world, which is a bit disappointing. This mode also gives you access to some settings and status monitors. You can load a disk image on the virtual CD-ROM drive, eject it, set-up networking or monitor hard disk, CD-ROM and network I/O as well as CPU usage.

Integration between the Mac and PC environment is really minimal, as the only way to exchange information between the two worlds is to use Windows' standard smb client capabilities or image disks that you can mount as if they were CD-ROMs. We also note that it is not compatible with Toast images unless you rename them with a ".iso" extension. Copy/Paste is not possible either.

Guest PC offers the following virtual computer specifications:
Processor:: Intel Pentium Pro
Chip Se:: Standard x86 based motherboard BIOS · Standard motherboard PnP BIOS and VESA
BIOS Memory: up to 512MB physical memory
Graphics: Emulated Cirrus Logic 5430 PCI graphics controller
Disk Controller: Standard Dual IDE Controller
CD-ROM: Standard ATAPI CD-ROM drive
Floppy Controller: Standard Floppy Disk 1.44MB controller
Modem on COM2 port: Standard 56K Modem connected to the Mac modem
Printer on LPT1 port: Emulated Apple LaserWriter connected to the Mac default printer
Ethernet Card: Emulated DEC Ethernet 21040 PCI controller
Sound: Emulated Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16
Monitor: Emulated Samsung SyncMaster 17Gli connected to the Mac monitor
Keyboard Standard 101/102-key keyboard
Mouse Standard 3-button PS/2 mouse with Wheel support

There is no DVD, USB or FireWire support. These are the main drawbacks of Guest PC. Other problems are some instability when switching between the Mac and PC environment and some lack of optimization. We can expect the the instability issues to be resolved soon through a minor update though.

Guest PC is well documented, comes without an OS and is reasonably priced at $69. So it's worth the money if you need just basic emulation to occasionally run a Windows application on your Mac. We believe Guest PC is a very promising piece of software and we're pleased that there is finally a real competitor to Virtual PC again.