Dual Boxing a NO GO...For now

If you want to go that way, your can use BootCamp (comes with MacOS X), and will need a Windows license to install on it. Utterly pointless, IMHO, but some people do it.

Piestro, I won't give you a super hard time as I realize you're a community rep and not setting company policy. Would you please get together with the team and give us some clarification? Is account suspension going to come as a result of VMWare simply being installed on the machine (this makes no sense) or because of running VMWare concurrently with EverQuest? As I understand it, EQ checks other system processes for anti-cheating purposes. That's all fine; most of us will give up some basic privacy to maintain the game's integrity. I use VMWare on a regular basis - not while playing EQ - because it's the premier virtualization app and helps me get things done.

It shouldn't matter unless you are running it concurrently.

So, basically at some point I just need to get a different laptop that is more capable of handling the game. I did change some settings last night according to one of the guides. I am zoning faster and there is less lag, but I haven't tried to run two instances of eq. I figure for right now, given all of the info you guys have given me I should just wait and get a new laptop...that will be just for everquest, lol.

People with macs who want to run EQ have two choices;

1) Native EverQuest for Macintosh, or
2) Run boot camp. This essentially turns your macintosh into a full blown PC clone and requires you to have a copy of windows to run it on. I've been doing this since 2007 or so.

Memory is a chip, electronic circuitry. Think of it as a laundry basket. Similarly, the hard drives are like your closet and your graphics card is like your washing machine.

Following this analogy, using an external HD to run EQ is like a friend doing her laundry at your house.

LOL, I like that analogy! I need a much bigger laundry basket, and a bigger closet that's internal. Alrighty, gottcha!

Didn't realize I'd submitted this earlier so I was surprised to see the reply, sorry bout the post-edit!

I think you should clarify whether we can't have virtualization software like VMWare Workstation running while EQ is, or whether EQ is not permitted to be run on a virtual machine.

that link has a TON of good ideas... even if you have set some things, there's a lot of settings there to check...

but with a laptop, there's a limit of how much one can do...

if you're wanting to two box on a 32bit computer, you're going to run into some lag automatically, as 32bit windows has an inherited memory limit of oh, 3.5 Gigs of RAM (that's the fastest memory it uses, for programs, data, video), and then, for laptops, and computers with the built in on motherboard video cards, unless the laptop has dedicated video ram, it'll run like a standard desktop with a motherboard video card, that shares that memory for it's video use as well... After that, you have to subtract room for the windows operating system, any drivers (video drivers, sound drivers, usb port drivers, printer drivers), and any programs in the background (weatherbug, ICQ, Skype, Ventrillo to name a few)... when the windows starts to overflow, it starts to use a cache on the hard drive of the computer... which is a lot slower than RAM... and with Vista and beyond, windows tends to take more memory than it used to for putting things in memory ahead of time... You might look into a USB flash drive for a "readyboost" drive... as that would unload into there, and possibly if there was room, the paging file... I actually help speed up my EQ load time some by using a flash drive for EQ...


that's assuming 4 gig ram or whatever you have maxed out... each instance of windows can try to grap up to 3 GB of ram...


if you have a computer that can support 8gm of ram, and it's on a 32bit windows, upgrading to a 64bit windows will allow it to utilize more than 3.5GB ram... and likely would be at least a dual core, which would help speed up boxing...

EQ is not permitted to be run on a virtual machine. I would not recommend running it concurrently.

There are three options. The third is the one I mentioned earlier, which is to run Windows EQ under WINE (in my case, in the form of CrossOver).

so is parallels considered VMware for the Mac ?

Parallels allows you to create a virtual machine. It competes directly with VMWare Fusion (Mac version).

As Piestro said, EQ is not permitted to be run on a virtual machine. That means it's a bad idea to use Parallels.

I stand corrected, the CrossOver WINE product is a third option. Sadly yes VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are virtual machines and as such will likely get you pulled over as a dirty rotten cheater (mostly because virtual machines make it easier to do nefarious things). Since EQ has had a long history of people trying to tweak the data to gain an advantage I'd avoid running anything that could be misinterpreted as a sniffing or tweaking tool. Proxy servers come to mind.

That's an.... interesting stance. I wonder what SOE's infrastructure team would say to statements like that.