parallels on macbook

[bogart]

My laptop with XP is fast dying from a hardware disease and I plan to buy a mac this week before its buried.
I'd like initially to run also windows on it under Parallels.

I'd go for a 15 inch MBP with 4G and the most powerful processor I could get but I can't help wondering about the medical (unproved) rumours there are about alzheimers and aluminium (I have not enough neurons as it is!) so the macbook appeals. Will it be powerful enough to run W under Parallels at a decent speed ?
Will I regret not getting an MBP ?

andy

 

[Bakey]

My laptop with XP is fast dying from a hardware disease and I plan to buy a mac this week before its buried.
I'd like initially to run also windows on it under Parallels.

I'd go for a 15 inch MBP with 4G and the most powerful processor I could get but I can't help wondering about the medical (unproved) rumours there are about alzheimers and aluminium (I have not enough neurons as it is!) so the macbook appeals. Will it be powerful enough to run W under Parallels at a decent speed ?
Will I regret not getting an MBP ?

andy

Either Parallels or Fusion will more than happily run XP - just chuck in as much RAM as possible into your MacBook.

Personally speaking I have a 2gig (complete with 2gig RAM) MacBook and have ran XP under both Parallels and Fusion - personally prefer Fusion, but it's purely subjective when reading many of the posts across these forums.

In fact I've also successfully ran Vista-64 under VMWare - that was a little slllooooowwww to say the least!!

I also took a copy of my existing XP box using the VMWare migration tool and successfully and painlessly transferred it across to my MacBook keeping everything intact with no need for reinstalls or loss of personal settings/data, etc. Again, I understand Parallels has such a tool (Transporter - I believe it's called?)

I can't remember if Parallels offer a trial version, but I do know the VMware offer one for Fusion - give it a go!

Good luck in your choice!

 

[ETID]

It really depends on what apps you will be running in xp and osx at the time. I have a 2.0Ghz C2D macbook with one gb of ram and xp will run under parallels quite well but it won't handle anything too heavy like a game etc.

Could you use bootcamp?

 

[bogart]

Bakey, thanks, very useful info.

ETID (and Bakey)..
"It really depends on what apps you will be running in xp and osx at the time. I have a 2.0Ghz C2D macbook with one gb of ram and xp will run under parallels quite well but it won't handle anything too heavy like a game etc."

Fairly intensive - for example protege, jena, the usual msoffice stuff where openoffice doesn't quite do the job etc.
In the long run I'll migrate what I can to osx but not immediately - my immediate task is to keep working (for example many mailboxes in thunderbird and lightning for my diary - this will migrate but I can't do all that now and I can't stop working while I migrate everything - it will take some time to get everything the way I want it).


"Could you use bootcamp?". not really - too much need to have immediate access to everything. Again, in the long run I'll use windows only for what won't run or wont run well on mac.

I've been running the trial version of parallels on this 2G windows laptop (1.8Ghz processor) with Ubuntu 7.10 and was unimpressed - too slow - but paging and windows bloat are no doubt factors there so I was hoping that with 4G memory and the leaner mac code it would run well. My impression from reading what documentation I can find on the web is that the only drawbacks with the macbook over the Pro are the graphics are a bit slower (I realise it uses memory but with 4G I dont suppose thats an issue) and the screen is smaller.
Oh - and that I can get a 2.6Ghz processor on the Pro but only 2.4 on the book but I suspect the difference isn't too visible.



Thanks guys

andy

 

[eXan]

Bakey, thanks, very useful info.

ETID (and Bakey)..
"It really depends on what apps you will be running in xp and osx at the time. I have a 2.0Ghz C2D macbook with one gb of ram and xp will run under parallels quite well but it won't handle anything too heavy like a game etc."

Fairly intensive - for example protege, jena, the usual msoffice stuff where openoffice doesn't quite do the job etc.
In the long run I'll migrate what I can to osx but not immediately - my immediate task is to keep working (for example many mailboxes in thunderbird and lightning for my diary - this will migrate but I can't do all that now and I can't stop working while I migrate everything - it will take some time to get everything the way I want it).


"Could you use bootcamp?". not really - too much need to have immediate access to everything. Again, in the long run I'll use windows only for what won't run or wont run well on mac.

I've been running the trial version of parallels on this 2G windows laptop (1.8Ghz processor) with Ubuntu 7.10 and was unimpressed - too slow - but paging and windows bloat are no doubt factors there so I was hoping that with 4G memory and the leaner mac code it would run well. My impression from reading what documentation I can find on the web is that the only drawbacks with the macbook over the Pro are the graphics are a bit slower (I realise it uses memory but with 4G I dont suppose thats an issue) and the screen is smaller.
Oh - and that I can get a 2.6Ghz processor on the Pro but only 2.4 on the book but I suspect the difference isn't too visible.



Thanks guys

andy

The performance difference between MB and MBP is minor if you dont tax your graphics card. If I were you, I would worry about other factors that are much more important when deciding between the two machines.