Just started college, what should I do with my Mac now? All software is for windows.

[M0esmac]

Hi,

I just got back from first day in college (UK). We did some basic things, and as I understood, we will be using Microsoft Visual Studio all the way and just other software of course for windows, and just Adobe Master Collection I could use on my mac.

Is there any software, or I should bootcamp? I can't find Microsoft visuals for MAC.

 

[Risco]

Bootcamp is the best option rather than emulation via something like Parallels. Just remember the battery life will not be as good running windows.

 

[M0esmac]

Bootcamp is the best option rather than emulation via something like Parallels. Just remember the battery life will not be as good running windows.

Yeah I know, I tried Parallels, I think people in a class would be annoyed with my MAC running that loud... I'd be too.

Is everything OK with a MAC on bootcamp and fans? Does it kick too much? Annnnd ok, how much battery lasts less?
In class it would be about half the brightness, no keyboard backlight, Wifi of course.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Yeah I know, I tried Parallels, I think people in a class would be annoyed with my MAC running that loud... I'd be too.

Then you have Parallels over configured try to use too much of the machine. Drop it back to about 50% of your usable computer and the fans won't run. On a modern MBP you'll still be good for Visual Studio. I do this now with a 2010 MBP, no big problems.

 

[exegete77]

Wish you well on this.

Just a note: The computer that Apple puts out is called ”Mac,” not MAC. MAC is an acronym for several other things and hence refers to other things in the computer world.

 

[M0esmac]

Then you have Parallels over configured try to use too much of the machine. Drop it back to about 50% of your usable computer and the fans won't run. On a modern MBP you'll still be good for Visual Studio. I do this now with a 2010 MBP, no big problems.

Yeah I know, but running both machines once isn't comfortable for me at all.
Btw I don't know what computers do we use in College, they aren't old, but they're just simple ones, for office. Definitely not Quad Core and not i5/i7 Dual Core. Something less powerful with 4GB ram and it handles it pretty good. I have i7 2.7GHz + 8GB ram, that is very good for visual.

 

[philosopherdog]

If you're running visual studio then just use bootcamp. You should be able to get windows 7 from your school. It runs extremely well. I ran this setup on a 2011 air all last year. Never crashed once and it ran very well. Only two issues were 1) slightly reduced battery power and 2) some loss of functionality with the trackpad such as swiping. Avoid virtualizing. It's a waste of time. I had parallels installed and it was pretty inferior t bootcamp IMO for serious work.

 

[glenthompson]

I use Visual Studio occasionally under Parallels with no problems. No heavy development, just maintenance on some old Windows programs. It allows me to use all the Mac apps while using VS. I hate having to reboot between the two environments.

 

[M0esmac]

If you're running visual studio then just use bootcamp. You should be able to get windows 7 from your school. It runs extremely well. I ran this setup on a 2011 air all last year. Never crashed once and it ran very well. Only two issues were 1) slightly reduced battery power and 2) some loss of functionality with the trackpad such as swiping. Avoid virtualizing. It's a waste of time. I had parallels installed and it was pretty inferior t bootcamp IMO for serious work.

How much battery do you loose?

 

[gnasher729]

Hi,

I just got back from first day in college (UK). We did some basic things, and as I understood, we will be using Microsoft Visual Studio all the way and just other software of course for windows, and just Adobe Master Collection I could use on my mac.

Is there any software, or I should bootcamp? I can't find Microsoft visuals for MAC.

You should be just fine with Xcode.

If you are not, you may feel free to ask the people responsible whether they want to talk to someone who is actually working in the UK software industry.

----------

 

[M0esmac]

Holy ****, I'm asking what should I do with my Mac, not HOW IS MY SPELLING, time to wake up.
Btw, my 1st language is not english, so again, back off.

 

[iAppl3Fan]

Any software that is available for Mac, I switched over and anything that is not I use a virtual machine. It's still faster than my PC from 3 years ago.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Any software that is available for Mac, I switched over and anything that is not I use a virtual machine. It's still faster than my PC from 3 years ago.

Weird, it's like technology improved in the past 3 years

----------

You should be just fine with Xcode.

If you are not, you may feel free to ask the people responsible whether they want to talk to someone who is actually working in the UK software industry.

Yes, if he's programming an app in java. If he's talking about a school that teaches using Visual Studio, he'll be expected to know how it works, and possibly even tested on it. He'll maybe have to submit programs in C# or VB.net. I don't know why you would try to use xcode where you clearly need visual studio.

The equivalent of a PC laptop running Windows.

No. Apple's bootcamp drivers would drain my old Macbook pro 2x as fast as if I ran OS X, because Apple insists on using the dedicated GPU all of the time, so there's no power throttling. Any windows PC* would run cooler, quieter, and longer.


*lets compare $1200 PC's to $1200 Mac's. Obviously a $300 Acer won't run for 5 hours on a single charge.

 

[Eidorian]

Windows is a second class citizen on a Mac. Back when I was in university it was either vi + gcc or Visual Studio for programming.

 

[M0esmac]

Maybe someone knows how much space does CS6 master collection and MS Visual Studio 2010 takes when installed? I need to know how much should I have in the bootcamp partition.
Btw, what windows should I go? Price doesn't matter. Win 7 Ultimate 32 or 64 or Win 7 Professional 32 or 64?

 

[BanterClaus]

College student here.

I've got away with running Visual Studios through VMWare Fusion on my MacBook for the past year and it hasn't caused any problems. Battery life has been fine for me.

 

[exegete77]

Holy ****, I'm asking what should I do with my Mac, not HOW IS MY SPELLING, time to wake up.
Btw, my 1st language is not english, so again, back off.

Thanks for such a kind response.

My comment was not derogatory against you, nor whether English is your first language (which isn’t the issue, but I also note that your English is very good!). But over the past 20+ years I have seen people misuse the name and other acronyms, especially for those first coming to the Mac. My comment was meant as a help, so that beyond this little universe, when you encounter MAC vs. Mac in conversation you might note the difference. I learned the importance of using precise language, when programming with Fortran IV in 1968 and in mathematics during that time in college; it does matter how we identify something.

You don’t have to wake me up, after all I have grandkids your age who do that just fine...

 

[M0esmac]

Yeah I agree about MAC vs Mac, but I don't think this is the right place to teach someone how to spell. Why don't just use Private Messages for that sort of stuff?

 

[aalegado]

Avoid virtualizing. It's a waste of time. I had parallels installed and it was pretty inferior t bootcamp IMO for serious work.

Emphasis mine.

That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Virtualization is a very good alternative to Boot Camp, is effective for many different usage scenarios, and it makes your machine more flexible "on-the-fly" since you've got both OS features/capabilities available concurrently.

Either way you will have to buy a Windows license (perhaps you are entitled to a license through your school or can buy a reduced-cost educational-use license) so for another $50-$80 more, you can also buy the virutalization software of your choice and try it out for yourself.

Maybe someone knows how much space does CS6 master collection and MS Visual Studio 2010 takes when installed? I need to know how much should I have in the bootcamp partition.
Btw, what windows should I go? Price doesn't matter. Win 7 Ultimate 32 or 64 or Win 7 Professional 32 or 64?

From the published system/hardware requirements:

Windows 7 - About 20GB
Visual Studio - About 5GB
Adobe CS6 Master Collection - About 16GB

So you need 41GB but I'd (at least) double that (82GB) and since it's a nice round number you should actually use 100GB, but read on:

Are you a heavy Mac or Windows user now? That would really determine how you partition your drive. If you have a 500GB hard drive and are primarily a Mac user then a 350/150 split (Mac/Win) would be reasonable and vica-versa if you're primarily a Windows user.

8GB of RAM is good. 16GB would be better especially if you have several Adobe apps (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, InDesign, et al) and Visual Studio running concurrently.

If price is no object then get Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Your minimum/fall-back should be Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

You might want to consider buying one or two external hard drives. Your project-related files will start eating up diskspace so you should consider storing them on an external hard drive (USB3 if your Mac is new enough, ThunderBolt if you've got deep pockets). 500GB is a good size for this purpose. And, since you should be paranoid about backing-up your data you should have a second, larger external hard (say 750GB to 1TB) drive that's big enough to back-up your internal hard drive AND the first external hard drive.

 

[M0esmac]

Emphasis mine.

That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Virtualization is a very good alternative to Boot Camp, is effective for many different usage scenarios, and it makes your machine more flexible "on-the-fly" since you've got both OS features/capabilities available concurrently.

Either way you will have to buy a Windows license (perhaps you are entitled to a license through your school or can buy a reduced-cost educational-use license) so for another $50-$80 more, you can also buy the virutalization software of your choice and try it out for yourself.



From the published system/hardware requirements:

Windows 7 - About 20GB
Visual Studio - About 5GB
Adobe CS6 Master Collection - About 16GB

So you need 41GB but I'd (at least) double that (82GB) and since it's a nice round number you should actually use 100GB, but read on:

Are you a heavy Mac or Windows user now? That would really determine how you partition your drive. If you have a 500GB hard drive and are primarily a Mac user then a 350/150 split (Mac/Win) would be reasonable and vica-versa if you're primarily a Windows user.

8GB of RAM is good. 16GB would be better especially if you have several Adobe apps (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, InDesign, et al) and Visual Studio running concurrently.

If price is no object then get Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Your minimum/fall-back should be Windows 7 Professional 64bit.

You might want to consider buying one or two external hard drives. Your project-related files will start eating up diskspace so you should consider storing them on an external hard drive (USB3 if your Mac is new enough, ThunderBolt if you've got deep pockets). 500GB is a good size for this purpose. And, since you should be paranoid about backing-up your data you should have a second, larger external hard (say 750GB to 1TB) drive that's big enough to back-up your internal hard drive AND the first external hard drive.

That is the answer! Everyone should learn from you.

I'm Mac user 100% and I would not work on windows if I could. But since college will be teaching on windows, it will be easier to understand when everything is on the same Software and Operating System.
Of course, when I will understand pretty much everything, I'll start writing code in other applications on Mac OS.

The thing is, if I'd want to write code and stuff in windows at home, I'd use windows, that means other applications would come in such as Skype etc. Actually, I think I'd use windows at home if it would be dead-line for me to do something, just because those apps which I use now like iTunes, Twitter, Carousel, Messages, Sparrow. + I don't have Notes and Reminders there... And still I don't think I need that much space (100GB or more). Also, as I understood we will be using CS6 not that often at all, mainly MS Visual.

 

[takeshi74]

Win 7 Ultimate 32 or 64 or Win 7 Professional 32 or 64?

Definitely 64 unless you have something that requires 32 for some odd reason. Keep in mind the memory limit with 32 bit.

Maybe someone knows how much space does CS6 master collection and MS Visual Studio 2010 takes when installed? I need to know how much should I have in the bootcamp partition.

Check the system requirements for them.

Avoid virtualizing. It's a waste of time. I had parallels installed and it was pretty inferior t bootcamp IMO for serious work.

Waste, inferior, superior and many other words are highly subjective. Virtualization is not a waste and it's not inferior for many. Never assume that your needs/wants/preferences are universal on any topic.

Virtualization is a very good alternative to Boot Camp

It can also be a very good complement. Again, subjective matter.

 

[ixodes]

After trying all three, I'm currently very happy with VirtualBox.

 

[M0esmac]

Is it hard to move files from Mac OS to Windows which is on bootcamp?

Can you move files from Mac OS to that partition and then boot into windows and use those files?