Virtual PC doesn't profess to offer lightning-fast speeds. Remember, you're running a second operating system, so don't expect even the mightiest G4 to keep up at its usual pace. However, we did note improvements in speed in most applications over the 3.0 version. Enough of a difference, in fact, to consider an upgrade if you're one of the many who've been frustrated by the sluggishness in the past. However, as before, Virtual PC is still not a good solution for playing PC games. Additionally, we tried watching two QuickTime movies over the Internet on both our Mac and in Virtual PC. While on our T1 line the Mac version was flawlessly gorgeous and buffered instantly while watching, trying to watch the QuickTime movie in Virtual PC was stuttered and clunky. And even when watching QuickTime movies that had been fully buffered first, the player still resorted to a slide show instead of smooth, streaming video.

One major change in this latest version is in memory allocation. Whereas in the 3.0 version you had to allocate memory to the Virtual PC application itself, in this version you allocate memory to each virtual "machine," which can be expanded and changed even while you're in the midst of using that machine. Additionally, drive images are now only as large as they need to be. That means that even if you create a drive image of 8 GB for your virtual machine, but the application is only using 2 GB, then the image will only be 2 GB--a great disk space saving feature.

The two most notable benefits of Virtual PC are the ability for Windows to use your Mac's existing Internet connection (there's no need to go through any further setup), and the outstanding USB support in this new version (you can access USB printers, scanners, and other peripherals easily). However, you should have OS 9.0.1 or later in order to take advantage of its enhanced USB support.

Another neat addition in this version is the ability to add even more operating systems to Virtual PC. That means that if you have a copy of, say, SuSE Linux lying around, you can install that on another drive image, and access it from Virtual PC. The only caveats are that you must supply the OS and that you're still limited by the amount of RAM you have. But how cool is that?

This program is actually a beta form pushed quickly into the market in time for the Christmas season, however. It crashed my 9.0 OS using IMac more than 15 times completely enough to require a complete reboot from the power key, while using their default settings of memory, etc. It says that it supports USB, which my printer uses, but it also turns off the Chooser when it takes over, so, when I try to print out something the job actually gets as far as the printer spool in the computer, but it never would bridge the gap between the computer and the printer itself.