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A little help here with virtual machines?
- Thread starter NTNL
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It depends on what you want to do in Windows 8.1 with what Mac model and how much RAM you have. Maybe you can provide us with that information and we can give you better answers.
I am vey interested in that topic as well.
I am a niw and more than happy mac user.
you knew there is a "but" coming, right? I still need my office. I have my old license and don't want to buy a new one.
So I am there to choose bootcamp, parallels oder VM Fusion?
Bootcamp is not really my option #1 since I love the mac OS experience and don't want to end up all in Windows again. So a virtual machine is my preferred way to go. Virtual Box is too slow and not as integrated I think..
So basically for MS Office and maybe another app here or there, which one would you prefer? VM or parallels? I do No CAD, no Games (maybe an old school C&C Generals here and here?)
I am a niw and more than happy mac user.
you knew there is a "but" coming, right? I still need my office. I have my old license and don't want to buy a new one.
So I am there to choose bootcamp, parallels oder VM Fusion?
Bootcamp is not really my option #1 since I love the mac OS experience and don't want to end up all in Windows again. So a virtual machine is my preferred way to go. Virtual Box is too slow and not as integrated I think..
So basically for MS Office and maybe another app here or there, which one would you prefer? VM or parallels? I do No CAD, no Games (maybe an old school C&C Generals here and here?)
I prefer VMWare Fusion for such applications, though you could always try MS Office for Mac, unless that suite does not include the tools you need.
Some benchmarks show an edge for Parallels in terms of performance, but I've tried both and prefer Fusion for its solidity. I run multiple VMs with different software stacks and OSes on my 2012 Retina Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM-- this machine is happy with as many as four VMs running at once under Fusion. USB interfacing, networking, everything works beautifully. Both Parallels and VMWare claim "near-native" performance, and it's true.
I have a bunch of less-used VMs on an external USB 3 drive and that runs well too, though there's nothing to compare with running a VM (or anything else!) off the SSD. Just stunningly fast.
The main requirement is lots of RAM. And don't expect your battery charge to last very long if you're running the equivalent of two or more PCs off of it. (You can get perhaps three hours out of an rMBP running Windows 7 in a VM before you have to plug it in.)
But the sheer utility of walking around with the equivalent of a house-ful of computers is amazingly enabling.
I have a bunch of less-used VMs on an external USB 3 drive and that runs well too, though there's nothing to compare with running a VM (or anything else!) off the SSD. Just stunningly fast.
The main requirement is lots of RAM. And don't expect your battery charge to last very long if you're running the equivalent of two or more PCs off of it. (You can get perhaps three hours out of an rMBP running Windows 7 in a VM before you have to plug it in.)
But the sheer utility of walking around with the equivalent of a house-ful of computers is amazingly enabling.
Parallels Desktop has some great features; not just not having to reboot your computer every time you switch from to Mac to Windows or vice versa but also being able to use so many programs with speed and efficiency, being able to access your document created in Windows from your Mac without any hassle and also sync Mac browsers such as Safari bookmarks with Windows browser bookmarks. http://parallels.za.com