Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Buying Advice for running Camtasia Studio/PPT

J

japple55

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 9, 2014
5
0
Hello All,
Have been searching forums for weeks now without much luck. Would to hear from some current owners.

About to purchase an i5 rMBP to replace my Win7 i7/8gb desktop and i5/8gb laptop. I still have some programs requiring Windows so will need either VMware or Parallels. Bootcamp I guess is always an option but would prefer not to have to reboot.

My question is on RAM & SSD: Most intense use case will probably be running Camtasia Studio (just purchased) and Powerpoint to record and edit in the virtual machine. Also running Quicken but not much of a resource hog.

Will the 8gb/256SSD be enough or should I max it out at 16gb/512SSD?

TIA,
Jim
 
japple55 said:
Hello All,
Have been searching forums for weeks now without much luck. Would to hear from some current owners.

About to purchase an i5 rMBP to replace my Win7 i7/8gb desktop and i5/8gb laptop. I still have some programs requiring Windows so will need either VMware or Parallels. Bootcamp I guess is always an option but would prefer not to have to reboot.

My question is on RAM & SSD: Most intense use case will probably be running Camtasia Studio (just purchased) and Powerpoint to record and edit in the virtual machine. Also running Quicken but not much of a resource hog.

Will the 8gb/256SSD be enough or should I max it out at 16gb/512SSD?

TIA,
Jim
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken all 15" rMBPs come with 16GB of RAM now from Apple. Which is what I would choose. If you need to run Windows programs on top of OS X you'll probably need the memory. Also you can run virtual box if you want to have a full fledge windows machine running without having to reboot.
 
If you're trying to do work at the same time on both the main OS and the VM it's probably going to be a bit of scramble for CPU resources with a dual core chip. However it shouldn't be that big of a problem as long as you don't try to work with heavy workloads on both the VM and the main OS at the same time.

It used to be that i7's have a number of hardware features over i5's to make virtualization work a little smoother, but with the i5's and i7's found in Apple's current laptop lineup they both share those hardware features (checked it up on Intel's own product specification pages).
 
SarcasticJoe said:
If you're trying to do work at the same time on both the main OS and the VM it's probably going to be a bit of scramble for CPU resources with a dual core chip. However it shouldn't be that big of a problem as long as you don't try to work with heavy workloads on both the VM and the main OS at the same time.

It used to be that i7's have a number of hardware features over i5's to make virtualization work a little smoother, but with the i5's and i7's found in Apple's current laptop lineup they both share those hardware features (checked it up on Intel's own product specification pages).
Click to expand...

Sooooo....would you suggest 8GB or 16GB? Is 256SSD sufficient?
 
japple55 said:
Sooooo....would you suggest 8GB or 16GB? Is 256SSD sufficient?
Click to expand...

It really depends on what you're going to do with the machine, if the workload requires that much memory or could expand to requiring that amount then go ahead as you can't upgrade it afterwards. Personally I'm doing just fine with half of that, but I don't run anything heavy in my VM (it's usually just tools that don't have an OSX version like AVR Studio). The toughest stuff I do is a simultaneous combination of an IDE (software development toolkit) with a big project, Word with a big document in it, the terminal and Opera with a couple of dozen tabs open.

As for the SSD, I personally couldn't cope with anything smaller than about 250GB and I don't even work with files that big (programming language source and configuration files are pretty tiny when it comes down to it).
 
Buying Advice for running Camtasia Studio/PPT

Not sure if this helps - but Camtasia spins up my mid-2012 13" cMBP fan when it comes to transcoding (?) the finished podcast, and that's in the Mac version! It was part of my justification for bumping my RAM from 8 to 16 - things were noticeably laggy when trying to work in other apps while it was busy...

A rMBP no doubt has plenty more under the hood - but if you're planning on using Camtasia regularly, and that in a VM, I'd say go for 16gb. The ssd size is potentially irrelevant, since you could always store the finished products externally?

Edit:

As mentioned above - I initially purchased a 256 SSD to dual-drive my MBP. Wasn't long before I bumped it up to a 500 - it filled up too quickly, and my OCD kicked in good and proper when there was less than 100gb available!

That being said - will really depend on what you will be doing, and how comfortable you are storing 'active' data on an external, that you simply keep at hand all the time.
 
Thanks Cassady. I was kind of thinking the PPT/Camtasia inside the VM would be straining 8gb but wasn't sure - never ran a VM and never had a Mac. It just seems logical that doing that inside of another OS would be resource intensive.

I guess if I wanted to save some RAM dollars, I could do it in native Mac apps, Camtasia for Mac, or bite the bullet and buy Final Cut Pro. But then I'm spending up again. I would have thought that 8GB would be okay if I stayed in OSX, but based on your experience, maybe that isn't the case. Also, I'm under the impression that Camtasia works better in W7 than in OSX, and the same with Powerpoint.

Is it also reasonable to assume that 8GB would be plenty if I did all my video editing in Bootcamp vs a VM?

And which VM are you using?

Decisions, decisions...
 
yjchua95 said:
Given your needs, you should go for at least a baseline 15" rMBP.

The quad core will help, as well as 16GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

Thanks, you're probably right but I just can't see myself lugging around a 15 incher ever again. I've been on 12-13" laptops for 7 years now and just can't go back. I would rather resort to Bootcamp and dedicate ALL the resources, assuming that would handle it. I would probably only be running email and messaging while I was editing anyway, and I have my iphone to alert me to anything really important.
 
japple55 said:
Thanks, you're probably right but I just can't see myself lugging around a 15 incher ever again. I've been on 12-13" laptops for 7 years now and just can't go back. I would rather resort to Bootcamp and dedicate ALL the resources, assuming that would handle it. I would probably only be running email and messaging while I was editing anyway, and I have my iphone to alert me to anything really important.
Click to expand...

The 15" is much lighter than the previous non-retina variants.

It doesn't feel that heavy considering the power packed inside it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back