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13" MBA and Windows 7 (via Parallels 6)

K

keithos27

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 17, 2006
131
0
Hi everyone. I just bought the new MBA 13" (256 GB Flash, 4 GB RAM, 2GHz processor). I'm super excited and waiting impatiently for it to arrive next week.

In the meantime I've gone ahead and bought Parallels 6 and Windows 7 Home Premium. I've never used Windows on the Mac (the MBA will be solely for Windows for work... I have a Mac Pro that is my main Mac box). Are there some tutorials or tips/tricks/pitfalls I should be aware of?

Any problems using Parallels 6 and Windows 7 on the new MacBook Airs?

Thanks,
Keith
 
keithos27 said:
Hi everyone. I just bought the new MBA 13" (256 GB Flash, 4 GB RAM, 2GHz processor). I'm super excited and waiting impatiently for it to arrive next week.

In the meantime I've gone ahead and bought Parallels 6 and Windows 7 Home Premium. I've never used Windows on the Mac (the MBA will be solely for Windows for work... I have a Mac Pro that is my main Mac box). Are there some tutorials or tips/tricks/pitfalls I should be aware of?

Any problems using Parallels 6 and Windows 7 on the new MacBook Airs?

Thanks,
Keith
Click to expand...

My Video was quirky on the 11.6" running in full screen on windows 7. It worked fine in full screen on an external monitor, but if I moved it back to the MBA display and go full screen, It would distort and I would have to exit full screen to use the VM. Windows XP did not have the same issue. messing with the video settings in parallels did not seem to correct it either. I had to resort to just using bootcamp for now.......probably a small tweak to the parallel tools app will fix it. Now I play the waiting game ha ha. Gotta love new products ;)

Other than that, it seemed to run fine on my maxed 11.6, so the 13 maxed should be great.
 
elwood58 said:
If MBA is soley for Windows, why not make it a Bootcamp Machine? Windows 7 via Bootcamp is excellent.
Click to expand...

Good question! I just figured it would be easier to use Mac OS X and Windows at the same time. Is there really any disadvantage? I'll be using this machine for Windows 7, Office 2010, and some internet usage. Nothing really more than that... Maybe some MS Project and MS Visio as well, that's really it.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I received the maxed out 13" a couple days ago. I installed Parallels trial and Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium. I use Office 2011 on it and it runs beautifully. This is my very first Mac, my first time using virtual machines and I love it. For my needs I don't need Bootcamp taking up a partition; Parallels is perfect for the occasional times I need Windows - I don't notice any lag. This is my primary computer and the entire machine and experience is a dream. It's my best computing experience to date, doing work on it is heavenly. You will love it.
 
keithos27 said:
Good question! I just figured it would be easier to use Mac OS X and Windows at the same time. Is there really any disadvantage? I'll be using this machine for Windows 7, Office 2010, and some internet usage. Nothing really more than that... Maybe some MS Project and MS Visio as well, that's really it.
Click to expand...

Here are two scenarios.

1) Running both OS X & Windows via Virtualization requires you allocate half the resources to each OS. IE: half the ram, CPU, etc goes to each OS.

2) Using Bootcamp dedicates all the resources to the OS you boot into.

If you choose #1, your computer will run sluggishly.

I run OS X & WIN 7 via Virtual Box on my MBP with 8GB RAM & it's fast & stable. Any less ram and it'll crawl.
 
wirelessmacuser said:
Here are two scenarios.

1) Running both OS X & Windows via Virtualization requires you allocate half the resources to each OS. IE: half the ram, CPU, etc goes to each OS.

2) Using Bootcamp dedicates all the resources to the OS you boot into.

If you choose #1, your computer will run sluggishly.

I run OS X & WIN 7 via Virtual Box on my MBP with 8GB RAM & it's fast & stable. Any less ram and it'll crawl.
Click to expand...

I agree with you completely about the 8 GB RAM upgrade required to run Windows 7 via virtualization (in my case I am using Parallels 5) and it runs VERY smoothly.
 
chiamac said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I received the maxed out 13" a couple days ago. I installed Parallels trial and Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium. I use Office 2011 on it and it runs beautifully. This is my very first Mac, my first time using virtual machines and I love it. For my needs I don't need Bootcamp taking up a partition; Parallels is perfect for the occasional times I need Windows - I don't notice any lag. This is my primary computer and the entire machine and experience is a dream. It's my best computing experience to date, doing work on it is heavenly. You will love it.
Click to expand...

That's great to hear. I just ordered a "maxed out" 13" MB Air to replace my current MB Air (November 2008 SSD model). While Boot Camp worked well enough on the old Air, Parallels was slow with the limited RAM available, so I'm glad you are liking the experience on the new model.
 
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