14 DAY TRIAL // WinTel, a software that allows the running of Microsoft Windows on Intel Macs has switched to QEMU for its 2.1 release. This version of the OpenOSX software promises huge speed gains because of this change.
The open-source QEMU x86 virtual machine was ported from PowerPC to Mac-Intel by open source developer Gwenol? Beauchesne. Now, as OpenOSX is using Beauchesne's port of QEMU in WinTel 2.1 the software boasts speed boosts of up to 600 percent over the previous 2.0 for Intel Macs. According to OpenOSX, WinTel 2.1 can boot Windows XP in just over half a minute on the 2.0 GHz iMac Intel with the 512-MB of RAM installed, and the application is a universal binary.
This huge speed boost is to be taken with a grain of salt as WinTel 2.0 running on Intel Macs was reported to be very slow, while previous versions, such as WinTel 1.x were reported to be one of slowest x86 emulators available for PowerPC Macs.
A speed bump of over 600 percent might seem like a lot, but if the initial speed was horrendous, in real life terms the emulation might actually be usable for day-to-day tasks. The days of running Windows at native speeds on the new Intel Macs are still far from being here, it seems.