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Installing Windows on Macbook Air?

C

crazyman3005

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2008
162
2
Hi,

Just wondered for those guys who have installed Windows 7/8 (Which is most stable?) on a Macbook Air, have you ran into any difficulties at all, or is the install process difficult?

Thanks in advance.
 
I ran Windows 7 both on boot camp and using Parallels. It runs great. Drivers are mature and stable, installation is easy. I've run it for a couple of years.
 
Just a quick question, how would you right click in a Bootcamp install of Windows? And a couple other things such as ctrl alt delete.... Can you attach a windows PC keyboard and mouse?
 
FYI: My experience moving from a Windows Laptop to MacbookPro

Hi,

Let me answer your question first, then give you more information than you asked for. Parallels 10 and Windows 8.1 64 on my 2014 MacbookPro mostly works.

I bought a 13" MacbookPro five months ago after many years of using Windows laptops. Because I expected that the wonderful world of Mac OS was going to be so foreign, and because I had one program (Quicken) that I had to run on Windows, I decided to also invest in Parallels, a most popular program that promises to make an Apple laptop perform exactly like a Windows laptop.

I have Windows 8.1 64 running inside of Parallels on my 2014 MacbookPro and it mostly works as advertised. I say mostly works because I have four problems which may or may not be related to the Windows applications. One, I experience on-going wifi connectivity problems when the laptop wakes up, which I assign to an elusive problem in OSX. My work around is to turn off, then turn on the wifi on the laptop. Most of the time, my connectivity is restored. I have eagerly installed every new patch to OSX, but no joy to date. Two, the battery drain is much faster when I am running the Parallels/Windows 8.1/Microsoft Office than when I am only using OSX applications. When running Parallels 10/Win 8.1 - 64bit, I estimate the battery monitor is reporting a decline of about 25%/hour. Running just OSX applications, battery life is at least twice as long. Three, dual monitor support does not recognize the second monitor in Windows when it works just fine on the OSX side. Four, I could not seem to get the MS Office Outlook client to configure correctly to my corporate Exchange email account. After several attempts, I just gave up and use the OSX Mail application which had no issues.

Here (finally) is my point: With the benefit of hindsight, I would have delayed buying the Parallels/Windows products and invested more effort using the stock Mac software. I found that the programs supplied as standard with the laptop (Mail, Numbers, Pages, and Keynote) were not too hard to become familiar with, and worked just fine at importing & exporting MS-Office files. The hardest thing to learn was how the OSX file directory structure (Finder) works, which still doesn't seem intuitive to me.

The Parallels/Windows route is expensive: I had to buy a license for the Parallels 10 ($67), a license for Windows 8.1 ($105), a license for Microsoft Office that includes Outlook ($67/year, ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION!), and antivirus for the Windows environment ($36/year). The Parallels tech support team recommend protecting both the OSX and the Windows virtual machines, so you will need two instances of anti-virus.

On top of that, things don't quite work as I described above. I find it very hard to work through the support maze: Is the source of the problem in OSX? Parallels? Windows? or MS-Office? Also, the frequency and severity of patches for OSX, Parallels, and Windows surprises and concerns me. And the support window for Parallels is extremely short

Based on my experience, I would suggest trying hard to "go all in" on the Mac OS side. Cleaner is better.
 
crazyman3005 said:
Just a quick question, how would you right click in a Bootcamp install of Windows? And a couple other things such as ctrl alt delete.... Can you attach a windows PC keyboard and mouse?
Click to expand...

By the clock there should be a black diamond icon named (I think) bootcamp control panel. You might have to show all the icons. One of the settings turns on the optional right mouse button. The bottom right part of the trackpad will be a right mouse button.

You can use any Windows device inside Windows, including keyboards and mice.

I use Windows 8 for retina support. Otherwise, it shouldn't matter much which version you use.
 
Rivr said:
Hi,



Let me answer your question first, then give you more information than you asked for. Parallels 10 and Windows 8.1 64 on my 2014 MacbookPro mostly works.



I bought a 13" MacbookPro five months ago after many years of using Windows laptops. Because I expected that the wonderful world of Mac OS was going to be so foreign, and because I had one program (Quicken) that I had to run on Windows, I decided to also invest in Parallels, a most popular program that promises to make an Apple laptop perform exactly like a Windows laptop.



I have Windows 8.1 64 running inside of Parallels on my 2014 MacbookPro and it mostly works as advertised. I say mostly works because I have four problems which may or may not be related to the Windows applications. One, I experience on-going wifi connectivity problems when the laptop wakes up, which I assign to an elusive problem in OSX. My work around is to turn off, then turn on the wifi on the laptop. Most of the time, my connectivity is restored. I have eagerly installed every new patch to OSX, but no joy to date. Two, the battery drain is much faster when I am running the Parallels/Windows 8.1/Microsoft Office than when I am only using OSX applications. When running Parallels 10/Win 8.1 - 64bit, I estimate the battery monitor is reporting a decline of about 25%/hour. Running just OSX applications, battery life is at least twice as long. Three, dual monitor support does not recognize the second monitor in Windows when it works just fine on the OSX side. Four, I could not seem to get the MS Office Outlook client to configure correctly to my corporate Exchange email account. After several attempts, I just gave up and use the OSX Mail application which had no issues.



Here (finally) is my point: With the benefit of hindsight, I would have delayed buying the Parallels/Windows products and invested more effort using the stock Mac software. I found that the programs supplied as standard with the laptop (Mail, Numbers, Pages, and Keynote) were not too hard to become familiar with, and worked just fine at importing & exporting MS-Office files. The hardest thing to learn was how the OSX file directory structure (Finder) works, which still doesn't seem intuitive to me.



The Parallels/Windows route is expensive: I had to buy a license for the Parallels 10 ($67), a license for Windows 8.1 ($105), a license for Microsoft Office that includes Outlook ($67/year, ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION!), and antivirus for the Windows environment ($36/year). The Parallels tech support team recommend protecting both the OSX and the Windows virtual machines, so you will need two instances of anti-virus.



On top of that, things don't quite work as I described above. I find it very hard to work through the support maze: Is the source of the problem in OSX? Parallels? Windows? or MS-Office? Also, the frequency and severity of patches for OSX, Parallels, and Windows surprises and concerns me. And the support window for Parallels is extremely short



Based on my experience, I would suggest trying hard to "go all in" on the Mac OS side. Cleaner is better.
Click to expand...


Thank you very much, appreciate the feedback, I think it was a matter of boredom other than anything else, will stick to my native OS X installation after hearing that...
 
crazyman3005 said:
Hi,

Just wondered for those guys who have installed Windows 7/8 (Which is most stable?) on a Macbook Air, have you ran into any difficulties at all, or is the install process difficult?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Via BootCamp I run Windows 7 Pro 95% of the time on my Air and both 27" iMacs. I love the Apple hardware and my application require WIndows. Not into WIndows 8 will wait till Win10

Win7 Pro runs blazing fast!
 
crazyman3005 said:
Thank you very much, appreciate the feedback, I think it was a matter of boredom other than anything else, will stick to my native OS X installation after hearing that...
Click to expand...

I find that my windows 8.1 installation is rock solid, fast and allows me to run MS Office (which the Windows version is vastly superior), I run other apps as well. I like OS X, don't get me wrong but for somethings I find Windows to be a better solution.
 
Meister said:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1842992/

Others have reported, too that they couldn't get it to work for no explicable reason.

I believe that it works, when I see it work for myself. Until then it's hit and miss.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I was talking about Win7 Pro in my case not Win8.

I would not pee on Win8 if it were on fire. I will look a Windows 10 after it has been out for a while.
 
Newtons Apple said:
Sorry, I was talking about Win7 Pro in my case not Win8.

I would not pee on Win8 if it were on fire. I will look a Windows 10 after it has been out for a while.
Click to expand...
My point was just that bootcamp is not reliable.
I would not buy a mac and expect windows to run for sure.
 
Newtons Apple said:
I do not understand as I have had 10 different macs and every one had BootCamp running WIndows and running it well.

Sorry
Click to expand...
I do not doubt you and admire your luck, but I've been using windows for over 25 years now and I can not tell anyone to rely on it to work. That is my personal experience and the experience of people in my immediate surroundings.
 
Meister said:
I do not doubt you and admire your luck, but I've been using windows for over 25 years now and I can not tell anyone to rely on it to work. That is my personal experience and the experience of people in my immediate surroundings.
Click to expand...

I've relied on Windows for nearly as long, going all the way back to 3.1, and aside from a very bad stint with ME, it has worked just fine the overwhelming majority of the time.

I've also been using Boot Camp on various Macs since 2007, including for XP, Vista, 7, and now 8.1. Yes, there are some limitations, but once you learn about them and either work around them or deal with them, there pretty much nothing I can't do on my MacBook Pro with Windows that I can't do on any other PC. And in fact, there are several aspects of Windows that I much prefer to OS X, most of which revolve around tweaking the OS for performance and thermals.
 
saturnotaku said:
I've relied on Windows for nearly as long, going all the way back to 3.1, and aside from a very bad stint with ME, it has worked just fine the overwhelming majority of the time.

I've also been using Boot Camp on various Macs since 2007, including for XP, Vista, 7, and now 8.1. Yes, there are some limitations, but once you learn about them and either work around them or deal with them, there pretty much nothing I can't do on my MacBook Pro with Windows that I can't do on any other PC. And in fact, there are several aspects of Windows that I much prefer to OS X, most of which revolve around tweaking the OS for performance and thermals.
Click to expand...
I am not merely talking about the limitations.
For some people the Bootcamp installation of windows simply doesn't work at all.
And neither do workarounds.

I've been using win since win1.
I used DOS instead until I was somewhat forced to use xp.
It's a horrific OS.
 
crazyman3005 said:
Just a quick question, how would you right click in a Bootcamp install of Windows? And a couple other things such as ctrl alt delete.... Can you attach a windows PC keyboard and mouse?
Click to expand...
To right click on trackpad you need to install the bootcamp drivers. Mouse works, not tried keyboard. 8.1 and 10 both work fine for me in bootcamp. 7 (because of all the updates) is quite a lot bigger if that matters to you.
 
Meister said:
I am not merely talking about the limitations.
For some people the Bootcamp installation of windows simply doesn't work at all.
And neither do workarounds.

I've been using win since win1.
I used DOS instead until I was somewhat forced to use xp.
It's a horrific OS.
Click to expand...

I know you've had problems but to be honest your issues seem more of the exception then the rule. I think for the most part Bootcamp is a solid product. I don't know why you've had issues and I can understand your frustration, but your results are not typical.

As for it being a horrific OS, I will say Win8.1 is probably a more stable product then Yosemite is currently. Like saturnotaku stated, I'll not try to convince you, as you seem pretty set with your opinion of Windows.
 
doynton said:
Windows 10 is more stable than Yosemite for me and it is still beta...
Click to expand...

I'm very surprised at the stability of the technical preview of win10. MS is definitely firing on all cylinders. I wish we could say the same thing for apple :(
 
saturnotaku said:
I've relied on Windows for nearly as long, going all the way back to 3.1, and aside from a very bad stint with ME, it has worked just fine the overwhelming majority of the time.

I've also been using Boot Camp on various Macs since 2007, including for XP, Vista, 7, and now 8.1. Yes, there are some limitations, but once you learn about them and either work around them or deal with them, there pretty much nothing I can't do on my MacBook Pro with Windows that I can't do on any other PC. And in fact, there are several aspects of Windows that I much prefer to OS X, most of which revolve around tweaking the OS for performance and thermals.
Click to expand...

What tips do you have for performance and thermals? Thanks
 
Rivr said:
Hi,

Let me answer your question first, then give you more information than you asked for. Parallels 10 and Windows 8.1 64 on my 2014 MacbookPro mostly works.

I bought a 13" MacbookPro five months ago after many years of using Windows laptops. Because I expected that the wonderful world of Mac OS was going to be so foreign, and because I had one program (Quicken) that I had to run on Windows, I decided to also invest in Parallels, a most popular program that promises to make an Apple laptop perform exactly like a Windows laptop.

...

The Parallels/Windows route is expensive: I had to buy a license for the Parallels 10 ($67), a license for Windows 8.1 ($105), a license for Microsoft Office that includes Outlook ($67/year, ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION!), and antivirus for the Windows environment ($36/year). The Parallels tech support team recommend protecting both the OSX and the Windows virtual machines, so you will need two instances of anti-virus.

On top of that, things don't quite work as I described above. I find it very hard to work through the support maze: Is the source of the problem in OSX? Parallels? Windows? or MS-Office? Also, the frequency and severity of patches for OSX, Parallels, and Windows surprises and concerns me. And the support window for Parallels is extremely short

Based on my experience, I would suggest trying hard to "go all in" on the Mac OS side. Cleaner is better.
Click to expand...

My experience has been almost exactly the same as yours. I bought Windows 8 and Parallels primarily to run Quicken. The scaling issues with Quicken have been a real pain.
I have just bought a Surface Pro 3 as I support IT in a Windows environment, so I expect I will remove Parallels eventually and install Quicken on the Surface Pro instead.
 
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