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Your experience - VMware on 11.6" MBA ?

P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Hi !

I have ordered the fully loaded 11.6" MBA, just wondering if anyone is using Parallels/Fusion on their MBA 11.6" already and how is the peformance ?

Which is better (performance/space usage wise): -

1. Create a bootcamp partition and then point the VMware to the bootcamp partition or

2. Load windows directly into Bootcamp

You experience or views would be very useful, because if the VMware experience is no good then I'll cancel this order and take the base model.

BTW I saw base 13" MBA model running VM ware and had tons application loaded on with people doing/launching random things to the machine in the shop and the response rate was still very very good !!

Thanks in advance.


Preetinder
 
Y

YOKOJP

macrumors member
Oct 25, 2008
81
0
PreetinderBajwa said:
Hi !

I have ordered the fully loaded 11.6" MBA, just wondering if anyone is using Parallels/Fusion on their MBA 11.6" already and how is the peformance ?

Which is better (performance/space usage wise): -

1. Create a bootcamp partition and then point the VMware to the bootcamp partition or

2. Load windows directly into Bootcamp

You experience or views would be very useful, because if the VMware experience is no good then I'll cancel this order and take the base model.

BTW I saw base 13" MBA model running VM ware and had tons application loaded on with people doing/launching random things to the machine in the shop and the response rate was still very very good !!

Thanks in advance.


Preetinder
Click to expand...


+1
 
maflynn

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,488
43,411
Having vmware access bootcamp for its windows environment is going to introduce more overhead and impact performance more then if you run vmware with a native vm environment. The advantage of using a bootcamp partition is that you have the ability to boot into windows directory or run it within osx.

Personally, given the architecture of the MBA, I'd go with straight bootcamp and skip vmware all together, especially if you're concerned about performance.
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Dear Both,

The sad part of the entire want windows 7 is that I have one software (smartdraw) which in windows only..... I am seriously thinking of a way to run that in any other way.... because to run that 199$ software I have to buy a 130 $ windows +70 $ antivirus....and if bootcamping it (50$ more ).

The 13" fully loaded model looks so much more attractive right now.....!

Thanks


Preetinder
 
L

lindorz

Cancelled.
Sep 1, 2007
20
0
I am also looking at the 11.6" MacBook Air with 1.6 and 4GB RAM... I want to run Visual Studio and possibly Visio in Windows 7... I would consider using Parallels or VMWare... Has anyone tried those two applications on the MBA?

I do have a MacBook Pro 15" with i5. But it is a tad bit too heavy to keep lugging to and from school, hence the MacBook Air possibility...

Any input would be nice. Thanks.
 
netdog

netdog

macrumors 603
Feb 6, 2006
5,760
38
London
VMWare runs XP great on my Rev. B, so it should be no problem at all on any of the news ones as long as you have the storage space for the VM.
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
netdog said:
VMWare runs XP great on my Rev. B, so it should be no problem at all on any of the news ones as long as you have the storage space for the VM.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the Omnigraffle and the free antivirus suggestions. I have been trying them over the last couple of months.

1. The smartdraw thing is unique in the sense that it integrates very well to MS office suite

2. I am paranoid about security and rely only on the top 3 brands.... including full disk encryption and remote wipe.

Its primarily because as a consultant there are ideas and presentations that must be slick (smartdraw) and secure (security tools).

But if the performance you are noticing is good, then its awesome. As I mentioned earlier, the 13" 1.8 GHZ, 2GB, 128GB that I saw at the store was running VMware Win 7 and a tons of other things and there was no lag.

I was impressed and am hoping that the decked up 11.6" at 70% of the 13"'s performance would do just fine......

Thanks everyone.:eek:
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
how much space

PreetinderBajwa said:
Thanks for the Omnigraffle and the free antivirus suggestions. I have been trying them over the last couple of months.

1. The smartdraw thing is unique in the sense that it integrates very well to MS office suite

2. I am paranoid about security and rely only on the top 3 brands.... including full disk encryption and remote wipe.

Its primarily because as a consultant there are ideas and presentations that must be slick (smartdraw) and secure (security tools).

But if the performance you are noticing is good, then its awesome. As I mentioned earlier, the 13" 1.8 GHZ, 2GB, 128GB that I saw at the store was running VMware Win 7 and a tons of other things and there was no lag.

I was impressed and am hoping that the decked up 11.6" at 70% of the 13"'s performance would do just fine......

Thanks everyone.:eek:
Click to expand...


BTW, in a 128 GB disk is 50GB allocated to windows + MS office + Smartdraw (<1GB) sufficient ? How are you managing the split to maintain performance.

I will definetly upgrade to the 256GB module (photofast) the moment it is available.
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Visio and Visual Studio

lindorz said:
I am also looking at the 11.6" MacBook Air with 1.6 and 4GB RAM... I want to run Visual Studio and possibly Visio in Windows 7... I would consider using Parallels or VMWare... Has anyone tried those two applications on the MBA?

I do have a MacBook Pro 15" with i5. But it is a tad bit too heavy to keep lugging to and from school, hence the MacBook Air possibility...

Any input would be nice. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I have used visio on the bootcamp partition (not VMware) and it works superbly well on the Rev B. but VMware on my Rev B was DOA because I had a 4200rpm disk.
 
Rafterman

Rafterman

Contributor
Apr 23, 2010
6,868
8,170
PreetinderBajwa said:
Dear Both,

The sad part of the entire want windows 7 is that I have one software (smartdraw) which in windows only..... I am seriously thinking of a way to run that in any other way.... because to run that 199$ software I have to buy a 130 $ windows +70 $ antivirus....and if bootcamping it (50$ more ).

The 13" fully loaded model looks so much more attractive right now.....!

Thanks


Preetinder
Click to expand...

Did you try Codeweaver's Crossover or some other product based on the WINE emulator? It lets you run many Windows apps natively in MacOS without need of VM's (or their overhead). It doesn't work on everything, but it runs a lot of different software. They have a compatibility list on their website.
 
MikePA

MikePA

macrumors 68020
Aug 17, 2008
2,039
0
Rafterman said:
Did you try Codeweaver's Crossover or some other product based on the WINE emulator? It lets you run many Windows apps natively in MacOS without need of VM's (or their overhead). It doesn't work on everything, but it runs a lot of different software. They have a compatibility list on their website.
Click to expand...

For Crossover - Smartdraw2008 has not been tested and Smartdraw2009 is known not to work.
 
N

natalie1981

macrumors newbie
Jul 5, 2010
19
0
Hi, just want to ask, does bootcamp come preloaded with the new MBA 11.6" or do I need to download/purchase it? Is the 64GB model enough to run Windows 7 on bootcamp if I don't load too many apps on OSx and Windows 7 or do I really need the 128GB model? Thanks.
 
C

Cat5e

macrumors member
Jul 12, 2010
52
2
natalie1981 said:
Hi, just want to ask, does bootcamp come preloaded with the new MBA 11.6" or do I need to download/purchase it? Is the 64GB model enough to run Windows 7 on bootcamp if I don't load too many apps on OSx and Windows 7 or do I really need the 128GB model? Thanks.
Click to expand...

It's built-in to OSX. 25gb should be more than enough for a basic install of 7.
 
K

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,031
7,872
What programs do you want to install on Windows? I'd normally recommend at least the 128GB storage option. If you devote 25GB to Windows 7, that only leaves a few GB for programs. Apple recommends a minimum of 32GB for Boot Camp.
 
K

KPOM

macrumors P6
Oct 23, 2010
18,031
7,872
PreetinderBajwa said:
BTW, in a 128 GB disk is 50GB allocated to windows + MS office + Smartdraw (<1GB) sufficient ? How are you managing the split to maintain performance.

I will definetly upgrade to the 256GB module (photofast) the moment it is available.
Click to expand...

That should be fine. I had the Office 2010 Beta, Quicken, and Windows XP Mode installed in a 45GB Win 7 Pro partition and still had some room left.
 
L

lindorz

Cancelled.
Sep 1, 2007
20
0
PreetinderBajwa said:
I have used visio on the bootcamp partition (not VMware) and it works superbly well on the Rev B. but VMware on my Rev B was DOA because I had a 4200rpm disk.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback... Yeah I am thinking about just running the Visio and possibly Visual Studio on Bootcamp and not bothering with VMWare entirely... Visual Studio is a very resource consuming application...
 
C

Cat5e

macrumors member
Jul 12, 2010
52
2
KPOM said:
That should be fine. I had the Office 2010 Beta, Quicken, and Windows XP Mode installed in a 45GB Win 7 Pro partition and still had some room left.
Click to expand...

On a side note, how does XP mode run in Boot Camp?
 
cleric

cleric

macrumors 6502a
Jun 7, 2008
533
0
Cat5e said:
On a side note, how does XP mode run in Boot Camp?
Click to expand...

XP runs fine on even the old macbook airs, the memory foot print is pretty small especially if you use something like nlite to strip out the crap. Most people wanted 4gb of ram fo windows7 in bootcamp and vm, also multiple vms at one time.
 
roland.g

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,414
3,153
XP will only address 2GB of RAM or maybe 3.2 or something, right? So even if you BootCamp it vs. Parallels/Fusion, you won't get too much advantage of having a 4GB model in BootCamp?
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Guess my question is..... has anyone experienced both omni graffle and smartdraw, I have the latest smartdraw VP version and i am biased towards it...

If anyone can chime in their opinion based on their experience with both... that'll be really useful.

Thanks
 
P

PreetinderBajwa

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 30, 2009
130
0
HK
Done with it :)

Hi Everyone,

Loaded Fusion 3.1 and loaded Win 7 in it. Given the new MBAs are pretty fast (and I got the 11.6" ultimate edition) I don't see a huge performance hit. Actually its better than my MBP 17" with GB RAM and Parallels 6 ! No issues here.

I have loaded smart draw in the VM and that seems to work fine too.... The Win 7 plus Smart draw took up space which I guess i unavoidable.... Now I have to carry stuff on external disk...

Guess problem solved.... as there is nothing else to do / try.

Thanks everyone.

I don't know how to close the thread but I guess this is thread closure.
 
L

lindorz

Cancelled.
Sep 1, 2007
20
0
PreetinderBajwa said:
Hi Everyone,

Loaded Fusion 3.1 and loaded Win 7 in it. Given the new MBAs are pretty fast (and I got the 11.6" ultimate edition) I don't see a huge performance hit. Actually its better than my MBP 17" with GB RAM and Parallels 6 ! No issues here.

I have loaded smart draw in the VM and that seems to work fine too.... The Win 7 plus Smart draw took up space which I guess i unavoidable.... Now I have to carry stuff on external disk...

Guess problem solved.... as there is nothing else to do / try.

Thanks everyone.

I don't know how to close the thread but I guess this is thread closure.
Click to expand...

Did you install Visual Studio 2008 or 2010?
 
J

jimboutilier

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2008
647
42
Denver
I've been flipping back and forth between Vmware and Parallels for years now.

Vmware has an advantage of being cross platform and a Vmware VM can run under severals OSs that have host software. In the past Vmware was more stable than Parallels but slower and requiring more resources to run.

Parallels only runs on a Mac but is significantly faster, requires less resources and I'd say with the latest release just as reliable as vmware.

I've run Vmware and Parallels on a MBA revC 2.13/2/128 and both ran ok. Parallels was a better experience.

I'm currently running Parallels on my MBA 1.6/4/128 and it's a very good experience. I'd expect vmware to be less good but acceptable. I would not recommend either without 4gb of ram.
 
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