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2017 MB for VM

H

HenMaster6000

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 16, 2003
142
0
Hi everyone

I'm considering getting a MacBook for mostly day-to-day tasks like browsing, watching movies, etc. But I would like to virtualize the Windows versions of my work apps - primarily Excel and Outlook.

Should I upgrade to the i5, i7 and / or 16gb for this purpose? There doesn't seem to be obvious consensus on this, but maybe i missed it.

Thank you for any thoughts.
 
16 GB RAM for sure. I'm surprised there is no consensus on that because if you're going to be running VMs at 4 GB a shot, then getting 16 GB is a no-brainer IMO.

As for the CPU, I'm not sure. The MB is not ideal for VMs, but then again if it's just for occasional use, maybe it's fine. I just don't know how much of an improvement the iX models will be over the m3, especially considering the m3 performance is much closer to the i5 performance than in previous years with the m3 vs m5.

I'm curious though, does the Mac version of Office not suit your needs? I can't comment here since I don't have Office 2016. I am currently still running Office 2011. I'm still trying to get my copy of Office 2016 through my institution for cheap...
 
I'm pretty optimized in Windows Excel, particularly with "alt" activated hotkeys that just don't exist on the Mac version.
 
The base m3/8GB/256 will run a VM just fine.

However, if money is not tight, the 16 GB gives you a little more leeway in terms of what you can do on the host and guest simultaneously, and may be a justifiable expense. For me, it was not.
 
Frosties said:
Is it the key placement? Because you can make new shortcuts. https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...-for-Mac-6bbeb90e-96d9-4e03-b199-fc026ebdc321
Click to expand...

That's actually pretty interesting, I didn't know it could do that. That said, I don't think it could handle long strings of commands like ALT-E-S-L, ALT-H-C-P-P, which let's you go super deep in Excel really quickly.
[doublepost=1506309165][/doublepost]
ZapNZs said:
The base m3/8GB/256 will run a VM just fine.

However, if money is not tight, the 16 GB gives you a little more leeway in terms of what you can do on the host and guest simultaneously, and may be a justifiable expense. For me, it was not.
Click to expand...

Feels like you are forced to move up a lot in price for the 16gb, and it sounds like it doesn't make too much of a difference in terms of performance, at least for what I'm doing. Thanks for your help!
 
Running a vm just for using shortcuts in office is overkill. And keep it running is always a few clicks more. So in the end I'm not sure that u really save time. complicated. And u pay additional for parallels, windows and optional RAM upgrade...
Even so I don't think u need to upgrade CPU or even RAM. 3GB for Win 10 is enough. I use it for CAD on my MB

Maybe u can just record a macro:)
 
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