ESPlanner
ESPlanner: State of the Art. An intelligent, different approach

Since I am a big Macintosh fan and I really like ESPlanner I want to get ESPlanner running on a Macintosh. The work I did getting ESPlanner running on Linux pointed the way. I decided I would use an ix86 emulator, running Windows, running on Mac OS X.

A little research turned up www.macwindows.com which has great pointers to PC emulators for the Macintosh. A Microsoft buyout product called VirtualPC appears to be "best in show" at the moment. After a quick trip to the local MicroCenter I had everything I needed. The host OS would be Mac OS X 10.3, running VirtualPC 7.0. You can buy VirtualPC bundled with a variety of Windows systems or by itself if you already have a licensed version of Windows that can be installed. I decided to buy the bundle with Windows XP Professional to give me another Windows variant to use for testing.

In principle older versions of VirtualPC, capable of running on MacOS 9 or earlier could be used. I wanted to try the latest stuff with my newest machine so I could have a single portable environment on which to do all my development.

The following discussion details what I did to get ESPlanner running on VirtualPC. This is not a tutorial about how to install VirtualPC on a host operating system (although I'll give you some tips where I ran into trouble). This is not a tutorial about how to install [relatively] modern Windows operating systems. This is simply the details of getting ESPlanner operational in a Mac OS environment.

Note that there isn't anything special about VirtualPC. In principle any number of instruction level ix86 emulators could be used, but the performance penalty for these types of emulators is typically a factor of 10 decrease or worse. Unlike the Linux experiment, I didn't bother trying other emulators. If you do, please let me know the results and I'll keep this tip up to date.

First, the tools, in no particular order:
  • VirtualPC 7.0 is the latest and greatest version of the VirtualPC product line. I hadn't tried VirtualPC prior to this experiment, but I can tell that this will be a very useful product, allowing me to usefully run Windows applications and my more "meat and potatoes" Linux development all from my Powerbook.
  • The hardware I'm running Mac OS on is a new 1.5 Ghz Powerbook G4 with 1.5 GB of memory, and 120GB of disk.
  • The guest operating system (the system that will run inside the virtual machine to be created by VirtualPC) I chose was Windows XP Professional, just for a change.
  • A copy of Windows Office 2003, borrowed from a friend for this installation.
  • Access to the internet in order to update Windows and Office (at length) and download ESPlanner.

Tip: If you're going to do this for real and be happy with the result, figure on getting about a factor of 1.5 decrease in performance on the virtual machine, i.e., if you've got a 2Ghz processor, the VirtualPC virtual machine will run at aproximately 3/4 (or less) the speed. Memory use on the host machine will be about a .25 to .5 increase, i.e., if you want a 512Mb virtual machine, then your host system better have at least 625Mb available and probably more. Compared to VMWare, the paging/swapping load seems considerably smaller with VirtualPC.

OK, lets get started:
1. Install VirtualPC. The installation procedure is well documented and pretty straightforward with a minimum of "geek-ese" involved. There isn't any obvious trial version of VirtualPC available, so if you want to try things out, borrow a friends before buying.

With the bundled version of Windows XP Professional, the whole installation happened at once, there really wasn't any seperate Windows installation procedure. If you only bought VirtualPC you would have to install Windows at this point.

2. Start VirtualPC and configure the Windows XP Professional virtual machine. About the only thing I had to do was configure the type of network I wanted connected and, just to make things easy, a shared folder on the host machine. Start the Windows XP Professional virtual machine.

Tip:If you're already behind a firewall and using NAT (all your IP addresses are in one of the non-routing IP numbers, i.e., 10/8, 172.16/12, or 192.168/16) then you'll find it easier to use bridged access in your virtual machine. If you insist on using NAT, then you'll have to add static routes to/from your local machine to the rest of the world for the virtual machines subnet.

3. Make sure that your network connection from the virtual machine to the rest of the network is alive and update Windows.  This can take a while, but  it's necessary as Office won't install unless you're up to SP3 at least. Windows XP Professional Login Screen
6. Now install Office. The only tools you'll need from the Office suite are Word and Excel. After the installation completes, it will give you a chance to update Office and to dispose of files kept in the installation cache. Since the amount of space on the virtual disk is limited it's a good idea to get rid of anything you don't need. Windows XP Professional Windows Office Installation Screen
7. If you haven't already bought your copy of ESPlanner now is the time. Once you've purchased ESPlanner you can download it directly to your virtual machine. Keep a copy of the installation kit around on your host machine just to make sure you don't loose it. If you already own ESPlanner then you'll need to get the installation kit onto the virtual machine. You can use standard network tools, like FTP or your web browser from inside the guest operating system. VirtualPC also provides folder sharing between machines with the shared folders showing up as the Z drive on your virtual machine. Windows XP Professional ESPlanner Purchase Screen
8. Install ESPlanner. Windows XP Professional ESPlanner Installation Screen
9. Put data into ESPlanner and run it. Windows XP Professional Running ESPlanner Screen
10. Take a look at the ESPlanner results. Windows XP Professional ESPlanner Results Screen

As you may have noticed, once you have VirtualPC (or any of the other ix86 emulators) installed, configured, with Windows running, you deal only with the Windows environment, the host operating system doesn't enter into it at all.

Your total out-of-pocket expenditure for a VirtualPC based solution to running ESPlanner can be as little as $129, if you already have a copy of a guest operating system. Check the VirtualPC website for the latest prices and versions. If you don't already have copies of Windows and Office installation kits (remember to check the ESPlanner website for details on the system requirements necessary to run ESPlanner) I've found Ebay to be a good place to start shopping for such things.

Bottom line is that you can buy a little software, reuse your existing hardware, save money, not deal with Windows constantly, and use a great financial planning tool like ESPlanner.

Dick Munroe (munroe@csworks.com), Cottage Software Works, Inc.