Boot camp, parralels, or new machine?

[rbrian]

I have to do some complicated (for me) work with excel macros. At work I have a hateful 5.5kg (that's 13 of your American pounds) monstrosity of a Toughbook which runs, no, limps and stumbles Vista with 2gb ram. At home, I have an 11" air.

I have excel 2011 at home, 2003 at work. Macros mostly don't translate, and since my users will all have windows, it makes sense to build the macros in windows.

I can't get the hang of right-clicking, and especially dragging scroll bars with a mac trackpad in windows 8, and the screen is a little small for large spreadsheets, but it's just right for everything else, and I can cope with one small thing.

Will multi-touch be any better with windows 7? Better with parralels than bootcamp? The cost of a windows and office licence is about as much as a cheap new machine with windows and office preinstalled. Should I just buy a new one, with actual buttons on the trackpad, and a large screen?

 

[anamznazn]

From my personal experience, the trackpad works the same in bootcamp and parallels. The experience is not as great as if you were moving around in OSX though. It feels a bit more...laggy.

Instead of a whole new computer, I would suggest you get a new monitor, keyboard & mouse and hook your Macbook Air to it. That should solve your screen size and right clicking issues.

Personally, I don't like right clicking on the Windows side either using the trackpad.

 

[rbrian]

I should have said, I live in a tiny flat, and mostly use my laptop on my lap. An external monitor isn't really an option, but if I had a desk it would have been.

Since a new mouse or trackpad would be required, it just seems neater and not much more expensive to get a cheap new computer. Can any recommend any that don't have an off-centre trackpad? What's that about anyway?