Xy4 on Win 8 /VMware / Win2K

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

I have been using Xy4 quite a bit on VMware and Win2K.


My experience has been uneventful and in fact perfect so far.


VMware integrates perfectly with the host, and allows Xy4 to access the
host drive as a letter.


Rather than going through all the sideshow you have to do to get just Xy4
to be visible in other VPC, you merely click a button to enter what
VMware calls 'Unity' mode. This replaces the Win2K screen with separate
windows accessible from the Win 8 taskbar.


Nothing could be simpler.


Everything just works. You can exit Unity anytime you want.


Resolution is not a problem.


I installed Win2K at the highest or 2nd highest resolution I could find
on my 3200x1800 screen. However, I have noticed that it adapts to
whatever resolution you drag it to. If I cover nearly the entire screen
with Win2K, then it will say it is at 3200x1603 resolution, and will list
that as one of the modes under Default Monitor/List All Modes. Fine. I
always just use Xy4 so I am not very interested in that.


I like Xy4 to occupy the entire vertical area of my laptop screen, and I
have grown accustomed to having 43 lines of text visible, which I prefer
to the old 25. In order to do this, I found that I had to set the font
size for Lucida Console to 34 points. This results in extremely clear
text in Xy4, cleaner than ever before.


Installation was a cinch, I just copied the necessary folders to the
Guest C:drive. However, I have found there is no need to do even that. I
can just run it from the host drive, though I am willing to bet Kari will
tell me this is not the safest practice.


The one thing I worry about is antivirus. However, I am delighted to
report that Internet Explorer doesn't work at all. I hope this means that
while I have perfect networking with the host drive (nominally at 1GB but
in fact much faster), I do not have an internet connexon.


I wonder how I might test whether I have an internet connexion or not?


It would be wonderful to know that I didn't have to worry about providing
Win2K with AV.


Altogether, VMware seems great. It is a great comfort to know that I am
good to go with Xy4 for a few more years whilst enduring Win 8 which is
dreadful though it does have some under-the-hood virtues. I have
no doubt there will always be a way, thanks to virtual machines.


N.B. VMware is a commercial product but the player, which is all I use,
is free for non-commercial use.


Also, for anyone who needs legitimate copies of either MS Office or Win 8
Professional and doesn't want to pay, they are available free to
non-profits.


I find I use MS Word occasionally; I enjoy its ability to take advantage
of OpenType ligatures, etc. However, even on the fastest possible system
with an SSD (as in this one) it is still terribly cumbersome, and the
ribbon interface is illogical and unfriendly to a degree I cannot
understand.


Final note: I am still not quite sure to what extent XP helps along DOS
fonts with ClearType, or to what extent Win2K does that with its earlier
version of anti-aliasing. But the fonts are at such high resolution that
it probably doesn't matter.


So I think I can safely recommend this setup to those who are worried
about having to buy a Win 8 machine.