MBA 13", i7 8GM RAM enough for Fusion and OS X?

[bsmr]

Hi,

Wanna buy a new Macbook and think about buying a MBA13", i7, 8GM RAM.

I wanna use it at my office (with an external 24" Display) with VM Ware Fusion (Win 7 for office stuff) and Illustrator, Photoshop at the same time.

What do you think about? Too much for the described MBA?

 

[MacDawg]

I have a 13" MBA with 4GB RAM and I run VMware with Win7 a lot for work
While I would prefer to have 8GB, the 4GB works well enough for me
I don't think you will have any issues with the 8GB

 

[bsmr]

Ok, but simultaneously you can't run Illustrator, InDesign or something else?! Right?

Don't wanna close the virtual Machine all the time. Or will it work all at the same time?

 

[kermitxc]

Ok, but simultaneously you can't run Illustrator, InDesign or something else?! Right?

Don't wanna close the virtual Machine all the time. Or will it work all at the same time?

you can

 

[hutch34]

I have a 128/4gb/i5 and use all of the following without any problems:

On OSX:

• Skype
• Spotify
• Chrome
• Outlook for Mac

At the same time, I run Windows 8 under Parallel's and run a fairly intensive day trading program that always runs perfectly. Also at the same time, I use Camtasia to record screen video, audio, and mic audio for demonstrations.

I would say you would have no problem with your needs!

 

[ZBoater]

What do you think about? Too much for the described MBA?

No.

 

[wgnoyes]

you can

8gb? Yes, it'll be fine. On a 4gb machine, you can run other native OS X apps at the same time as vmware fusion hosting a guest machine, but you wouldn't enjoy it. Your available ram on a 4GB machine would drop below 500mg (more like 300mg) and everything except the guest machine would be slow. I upgraded a MBP to 8gb, and all the performance issues immediately disappeared.

 

[dyn]

When it comes to virtualisation with products like VMware Fusion two things matter: amount of memory and amount of iops. CPU & GPU aren't used all that much, the i5 will be enough for it. However, whatever you run in the vm can benefit from a faster CPU and/or a more powerful GPU.

Adobe Creative Suite has a version for OS X though. I recall something about a procedure where you can move your Windows license to OS X. Running everything in OS X is a better idea because it will free up some resources that are necessary for virtualisation and Windows. If I were you I'd look into that.

 

[Cliff3]

What do you think about? Too much for the described MBA?

No (although my Win 7 VM is x64 and has a 2GB memory requirement)

 

[Barna Biro]

210.5% CPU usage? That's nice...

 

[Cliff3]

210.5% CPU usage? That's nice...

2 cores are configured for the VM, but it sometimes exceeds 100% even with only 1 core configured. However, the screencap was intended to convey memory consumption, which exceeded 5GB.

 

[bsmr]

No (although my Win 7 VM is x64 and has a 2GB memory requirement)

Do you run Win7 with one or two cores?

 

[Cliff3]

Do you run Win7 with one or two cores?

Two

 

[bsmr]

And how much RAM? Is OS X still running smooth?