Windows on Power MAC G5

Hello iFans,

I have a Power MAC G5 at work, which has been lying around. Today I booted it and its looks healthy.

Was wondering if I can install Windows on it and if so, how am I supposed to go about it?

The only concern is that it says CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (2.2). I assume it is not an Intel platform and Windows cannot be installed? Kindly advise.

cheers,
KUBU

Windows only runs on X86 hardware. The PowerMac G5 is a Power PC Processor. There is no way to natively run Windows on Power PC hardware. There is an emulator but it's so slow even on a G5 it's almost worthless.

Do not even consider this as the last version of Microsoft's VirtualPC is discontinued and was as slow as a wet week and not worth wasting time on period.

I have heard there is other emulator software besides VirtualPC but it's just as slow as your wet week!

Why dose anyone want to run windows on a Mac....I could see it if you where in a multinational business that needed to open proprietary docs or something. It would make more sense to put Linux on it.

Mac SK said:

Why dose anyone want to run windows on a Mac....I could see it if you where in a multinational business that needed to open proprietary docs or something. It would make more sense to put Linux on it.

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I know there are people who really need Windows for certain things, but I agree. I installed XP SP2 just to learn Bootcamp to help users here with their questions. I uninstalled it after a week when I was satisfied I knew enough to help people with bootcamp issues. I use a Windows machine for when I need Windows which mostly is Gaming and some network service calls.

I have had Bootcamp partitions on both Macs for months. Until recently I rarely used them so I didn't mind rebooting. Unfortunately one of the sites that I must use regularly for work requires Internet Explorer.

Until recently the site documentation said IE but it would work fine with Safari on a Mac. Their most recent update must have seriously changed something on the back end because apparently if you use anything other than IE it garbles stuff during the save process. On screen it looks fine but apparently garbage is saved.

There are a lot of sites that are kinda like that. They complain about you not using IE but they really work. Others are crippled like the update you mentioned, while still others are simply designed not to run on non-IE browsers.

Those are fun to beat up on, though. Like, in Firefox you can install the Nightly Tester Tools and have Firefox outright lie and give a false useragent string. It's honestly kinda fun to do things like that... wreck someone's poorly-laid plans for browser favoritism by just lying through your browser's teeth!

Especially fun if the site was designed by a corporation or government body and they INSIST that you use IE on Windows to use their crappy site.

... Even more fun if they intend for you to buy things from them. Yes, design your page to not work you crazy nuts! That's the way to get business!

I have Safari's Develop menu turned on because of things like that. At one point one of the major credit card companies had a site that did not work with Safari for Mac (I think their excuse was security concerns). Their solution was to suggest that you either use Netscape or IE for the Mac (gasp). This was at least a couple of years after Microsoft stopped active development of IE for Mac.

dtravis7 said:

I know there are people who really need Windows for certain things, but I agree. I installed XP SP2 just to learn Bootcamp to help users here with their questions. I uninstalled it after a week when I was satisfied I knew enough to help people with bootcamp issues. I use a Windows machine for when I need Windows which mostly is Gaming and some network service calls.

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You got that Right! Just look at the (Other OS threads) it looks like pain city.

Likewise when still working and needed to run Windows only programs, best solution was a cheap Dell latitude laptop running XP Pro.

Well, if ReactOS keeps up this pace, expect a PPC port within a year or two?