Boot Camp W/ Windows 8

My 2014 128gb 12 Hour MBA runs nicely with OSX.
But I am considering dual booting Windows 8.
Have any of you already done this or are still using Windows 8 with MBA?

My biggest concern is Battery life, I have heard that it is very battery efficient with the MBA, but I have also heard the opposite.

I would like to hear your guys' experiences with Windows 8

Also with 128gb its going to be rather tight depending on how large Win 8 will take up

maflynn said:

I have a 256GB MBP that has bootcamp/windows 8 installed. I can say that Mac has a shorter battery lifespan while running windows.

I also think 128GB may be a tight fit for windows 8, how much free space do you currently have?

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I have 93.8GB currently left. However I am planning to run mainly the W8 with like 2/3 of the space allocated. How much shorter would you say the battery life is on average use? I mean the battery is what I prioritize more than anything. I also understand that windows percentage estimate is very exact aswell.

How is the sleep to wake on W8 for you? Speeds compatible to Yosmite?

freeuser said:

you can get Parallels or Vmware trials and install Win8/8.1 with a Demo key and try it yourself, it can be done in less than one hour, and it will use only the least harddisk space for your virtual machine. And if you don't like it, just throw it into trash ;-).

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Yeah I am aware of Parallels, but I think it uses much more battery than bootcamp because you're essentially running two OS at the same time.

Update: I have installed and am running windows 8 on my 2014 MBA.

I noticed a significant decrease in battery, more than I had expected.
About 5 hours of internet browsing.

Not sure if windows 7 would be a better option at this point.

Could some people post their experiences
That would be great!

maflynn said:

That unfortunately is the downside of running windows natively on an apple laptop. Battery consumption is much greater then OSX.

Tbh, since my windows needs are much greater then they were a while ago, I opted for for a surface pro, so I can run windows with that, get great battery life and MBP is freed up to running OS X all the time.

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The surface pro is a great machine, I was looking to purchase it aswell.
However, seeing threads such as these: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1606590/
Convinces me that I should try out different versions of windows, since my battery time (even without doing anything) is significantly lower than 10 hours.
With that being said, do you think I should try installing windows 7 or xp