MacBook enough to Run Windows + Office

[Jay42]

I need a new Windows laptop for work. I have windows desktops in my office and home office, so the laptop will only be for travel. I also need a Mac personal laptop (currently have a 2011 MBA 11"). I am hoping to kill two birds with one stone by running Windows via VMWare on a new MB.

I am a financial analyst. My most demanding requirement is running VBA macros in Excel. However, if VMWare is laggy on the MB, i'd rather just get a dedicated WinBook. Hoping to hear from others running MSoft apps on the MB.

 

[KPOM]

How does Office work on your 2011 MBA? I'd say the MacBook will be roughly comparable, except the storage, GPU, and RAM are faster (the storage significantly so). You might be better off running Windows in Boot Camp so the VBA macros would run native. Is Office 2016 for Mac an option?

 

[boltjames]

I need a new Windows laptop for work. I have windows desktops in my office and home office, so the laptop will only be for travel. I also need a Mac personal laptop (currently have a 2011 MBA 11"). I am hoping to kill two birds with one stone by running Windows via VMWare on a new MB.

I am a financial analyst. My most demanding requirement is running VBA macros in Excel. However, if VMWare is laggy on the MB, i'd rather just get a dedicated WinBook. Hoping to hear from others running MSoft apps on the MB.

The answer is an emphatic "yes".

I'm a Windows guy, hate OSX, but with Sony going out of the Vaio business I needed a new sleek/light/slim notebook strictly for the 30 days a year I travel and the occasional board meeting. I run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Skype, iTunes, Slingbox, the typical senior executive stuff. The new Retina MacBook is perfect in that regard, I run Windows 10 under Bootcamp, never flip it over to OSX, and find that this groundbreaking laptop is the perfect travel Windows machine.

BJ

 

[Hook85]

The answer is an emphatic "yes".

I'm a Windows guy, hate OSX, but with Sony going out of the Vaio business I needed a new sleek/light/slim notebook strictly for the 30 days a year I travel and the occasional board meeting. I run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Skype, iTunes, Slingbox, the typical senior executive stuff. The new Retina MacBook is perfect in that regard, I run Windows 10 under Bootcamp, never flip it over to OSX, and find that this groundbreaking laptop is the perfect travel Windows machine.

BJ

Interesting thoughts there, and certainly food for thought for me.

I run Windows 10 through VMware and notice no problems. I sometimes have Office 2016 open on both OSX and on Windows (they're registered to difference Office 365 accounts so that I can access two separate one drives...) and never notice any lag at all.

I'm still surprised at how quick and versatile this little machine is.

 

[Jay42]

How does Office work on your 2011 MBA? I'd say the MacBook will be roughly comparable, except the storage, GPU, and RAM are faster (the storage significantly so). You might be better off running Windows in Boot Camp so the VBA macros would run native. Is Office 2016 for Mac an option?

I'm on an i5 ASUS notebook now, circa 2012. I've never run Windows on my MBA.

The answer is an emphatic "yes".

I'm a Windows guy, hate OSX, but with Sony going out of the Vaio business I needed a new sleek/light/slim notebook strictly for the 30 days a year I travel and the occasional board meeting. I run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Skype, iTunes, Slingbox, the typical senior executive stuff. The new Retina MacBook is perfect in that regard, I run Windows 10 under Bootcamp, never flip it over to OSX, and find that this groundbreaking laptop is the perfect travel Windows machine.

BJ

That's good to hear. I am hoping to run as a virtual machine so I can jump back and forth between Windows and OSX, but it's nice to know that bootcamp is a viable backup backup plan.

 

[KPOM]

I'm on an i5 ASUS notebook now, circa 2012. I've never run Windows on my MBA.



That's good to hear. I am hoping to run as a virtual machine so I can jump back and forth between Windows and OSX, but it's nice to know that bootcamp is a viable backup backup plan.

You can actually use a BootCamp partition as a virtual machine, giving you some flexibility, though there are some downsides (you won't be able to use the "suspend" feature). There was a bug in Parallels 10 on the new MacBook, but they should have fixed that with Parallels 11.

 

[inmnbob]

I am running parallels 11 and Windows 10 with Office 2013 with no problem in Conncurence mode and Cortana is even great



\\

 

[zhenya]

Virtualization is not particularly processor intensive in and of itself - so long as you have at least one core to devote to each OS. As the Macbook has a reasonable amount of RAM and a fast SSD it should be fine running a virtual copy of Windows - the real question is what you need to do once that copy is running - and in your case that sounds pretty light so I would not expect any issues. It will however take quite a hit to your battery if that's at all a concern - but that's the case no matter which model you choose.