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fjs08

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 25, 2003
1,252
0
Looking to buy a new Mac Book Air.
I want to add Windows on it for a few programs... Computer baseball to be accurate <g>.Strat and Diamond Mind.. May also want to add Office. I do like Excel and Word for PC more than Mac.
Question is the size of HD to get. 128 or 256 GB hard drive if I add Win 7 or 8??
Thoughts.
Thx.
Frank
 

fjs08

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 25, 2003
1,252
0
Does Boot Camp or Parallels matter???
Not from a HD standpoint, but from a performance standpoint.
Thx.
Frank
 

AdrianK

macrumors 68020
Feb 19, 2011
2,230
2
Does Boot Camp or Parallels matter???
Not from a HD standpoint, but from a performance standpoint.
Thx.
Frank

A VM will always be slower than booting directly in to the OS. You'll also be splitting your system's RAM between the host and guest OSes. As long as you're not doing anything which requires tones of RAM of graphical power then a VM should run fine. If you intend to run virtual machines, get an Air with 8GB of RAM, you'll struggle with only 4GB.
 

in2tech

macrumors regular
Aug 23, 2012
136
13
Get the 256GB for sure if you can afford it! I have Windows 7 Ultimate on my 128GB, but I also have pretty large games I like on Windows along with MS Office because I already own it! I plan on selling the base MacBook Air I just bought in October 2012 when the 2013 model with Haswell ( I think it is) comes out and getting at a minimum 256GB and probably 8GB RAM next time! Like I said for me it's about the Windows games I already own and like and are not available on Mac OSX! If it was just MS Office and you don't load alot of music. photos, videos, or games, 128GB is fine!

The speed of the SSD coming from a Windows machine with a regular HD is amazing! Don't think I'll ever be able to go back to just a regular HD again! At the least a combo of SSD and HD would be the best! Of course I like the MacBook Air and wouldn't want a MacBook Pro I don't think! The ability of the MacBook Air amazes me daily!
 
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