Re: Reasons to prefer W2K [was Re: Finding W2K was Re: La Machine Est Morte, Vive La Machine!]

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

Re fullscreen, I think you have to run the PC 2007 option Kari has talked
about. My impression is that there isn't any other way, unless one of the
DOS-only apps does it. U2 and custom files work as expected in any VM
solution I have tried.


At 25/07/2014 17:07, you wrote:

And then there is (presumably)
the matter of being able to make use or the U2 library, which continues
to be a serious stumbling block for any Nota Bene option.  Not to
mention customized Xy keyboard files and some other things.  I also
count access to running Xy fullscreen as an important
consideration.


   Jordan






From: Bill Troop 


To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx


Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 5:41 AM


Subject: Reasons to prefer W2K [was Re: Finding W2K was Re: La
Machine Est Morte, Vive La Machine!]




The last VBox I tried was the latest about 3 months ago. Things
change rapidly, and it's easy enough to experiment with multiple VM
systems, so long as you remember, as Kari reminds, not to run them
simultaneously. My subjective impression at that time was that VMware was
faster with Xy4. I think a lot depends on the quality of the VM's video
driver for the given guest OS at any given time.



Regarding reasons to prefer W2K over XP and Win7-32: I think Kari has
pointed out that W2K is not only smaller but is faster. In my experience
Xy4 under W2K is palpably faster than under XP, and I imagine that Win
7-32 is slower still, though I have not yet tried virtualizing it. It
doesn't matter if you have the drive space and the memory. The larger,
more complex OS's still seem to work more slowly to do the same thing,
even when it's something as simple as running XyWrite. I am inclined to
say that XyWrite runs better for me under virtual W2K than under _native_
Win7-32 or XP. My sense is that Xy4 under virtualized W2K is the best Xy4
experience I have had since W95. What do I mean by best experience? The
sense of having no perceptible lag, ever, in Windowed Xy4, no pauses,
etc. etc.



My testing is not extensive yet. Others need to test these different
solutions on different hardware and record their impressions.



At 25/07/2014 03:55, you wrote:


Hi Bill,



How recent was your version of VBox, where this was still the case
?  The one I downloaded the other day was v. 4.3.14-95030.  (I
guess I could locate the changelog.)  The version of VMWare player I
downloaded -- in early May -- was v. 6.0.2, which may not be the most
recent.  I'm getting closer to trying out one or the other of these,
but if your observation still holds that might tip the balance back in
favor of VMWare.  Of course, if I went for 32-bit Win 7 as the
Guest, this could all be moot.  But I doubt I have enough hard drive
space right now to accommodate that.  Might have to upgrade /
replace the other hard drive first, and there could be some other reasons
for doing that anyway.





   Jordan



From: Bill Troop 
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 3:57 PM
Subject: Re: Finding W2K was Re: La Machine Est Morte, Vive La
Machine!
Just so long as you're clear, Jordan, that, using Win2K as the guest,
VBox will not (in its current version) allow XyWrite to display
directories of your host drive, but VMware will. That is the main reason
to prefer VMware at this time. There is no reason why this should not be
fixed in the future, but it is possible that no bug report has been
filed.
At 23/07/2014 17:15, you wrote:



Thanks Kari, this is good to know.  Given that Virtualbox seems
to have received the better reviews here -- for more flexibility in
certain areas -- it would be good to find out about any equivalent VM
'snapshot' or backup facility it may offer.


   Jordan