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Should I switch to PC?
- Thread starter manmit
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You are right. I am a contractor and it is my resopnsibility to get the software. There is only one software that provides the output client wants and this sofware is my responsibility to buy (part of cost that client will reimburse).
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I wish it be this simple but it really not unfortunately. I can get a high-end PC like new dell one 27 but it costs $1300 vs. buying a windows 7 license copy and bootcamp it on mac. End of the day, I still need to make sure that my project is profitable...
Yes, Windows PCs are much faster than Lion-based Macs. Only a small minority of long haired individuals uses Macs. They are usually aggressive, downvoting fetishists, and dangerous individuals (former Microsoft prisoners).
sorry man, i was honestly just curious.
Quite possibly the least helpful responses to his question. Nice work champ!
The irony of your post must be lost on you
Also, I disagree. It's *incredibly* helpful to point out when someone doesn't know what they're doing. Personally, I wouldn't let this guy within 1 km of any project I'm working on. I feel sorry for his clients
It would certainly be more cost effective for you to just use bootcamp. You can pick up an OEM Windows 7 disk on Amazon for around $100 easily. That's all you need. Setup is easy, it runs just like a Windows PC would. Just make sure you follow all the instructions and you'll have nothing to worry about.
I see no reason to invest $1000 in a new PC when you have a perfectly adequate computer right in front of you.
I see no reason to invest $1000 in a new PC when you have a perfectly adequate computer right in front of you.
I do parellel 7. Works great. Just change the setting and let it use all cores. Works fine for me.
If you plan on doing a lot of this data analysis, i suggest you buy a cheap windows desktop that you can upgrade. I'd run the data analysis on the desktop, so you don't have to tie down your personal laptop all the time. If you do enough of this type of work, it will pay off in the long run, and you'll have cheaper upgrade options for more serious work in the future. If the data analysis doesn't need to run 24/7, you can also try Amazon Cloud
I would try bootcamp first, but you can probably get a pc with better value if you dont really need osx
I have a 16GB rMBP, using Bootcamp.
I ran an unscientific test to compare performance:
1. MSAccess Database 1.68GB
2. Grouped/Join Query 1.635M records < 313K records
3. Dell Laptop, 8GB, Dual Core, 2.4GHz
4. MacBook Pro, 16GB, Quad Core, 2.3GHz
Query Results (average over 3 runs, each platform):
1. 19 sec: Dell Laptop
2. 10 sec: Mac via VMWare, pointing to bootcamp (2 vCPUs)
3. 10 sec: Mac via bootcamp directly
I am pretty pleased with this result!
I ran an unscientific test to compare performance:
1. MSAccess Database 1.68GB
2. Grouped/Join Query 1.635M records < 313K records
3. Dell Laptop, 8GB, Dual Core, 2.4GHz
4. MacBook Pro, 16GB, Quad Core, 2.3GHz
Query Results (average over 3 runs, each platform):
1. 19 sec: Dell Laptop
2. 10 sec: Mac via VMWare, pointing to bootcamp (2 vCPUs)
3. 10 sec: Mac via bootcamp directly
I am pretty pleased with this result!
The irony of your post must be lost on you
Also, I disagree. It's *incredibly* helpful to point out when someone doesn't know what they're doing. Personally, I wouldn't let this guy within 1 km of any project I'm working on. I feel sorry for his clients
Irony was not lost on me. I was responding to you, not the OP. Kindly point out where, up to the point of your first post in this thread, that the OP "doesn't know what they're doing" causing you to "feel sorry for his clients".
OP is looking for advice and I see nothing in his question that leads me to believe he is incompetent at his job.
If you are worried about the trackpad then the following tooks help massively:
http://trackpad.powerplan7.com/ - Trackpad ++
http://powerplan7.com/home.htm - Power Plan Assistant
Features of trackpad ++:
>>NEW<< Unleashed multitouch capabilities: support of 3-finger and 4-finger gestures (tapping, back/forward, zoom in/out, show/hide all windows);
Dramatically improved two-finger scrolling experience: Mac® OS X Lion-similar (accelerated/natural) scrolling model implemented;
Improved pointer ballistics (i.e. how a pointer speed depends on a finger speed; six optimal presets built-in);
Bug-free dragging with two fingers (both fingers allowed to move freely), option to increase the pointer speed while dragging;
User-customizable option to ignore accidental trackpad input when typing, option to eliminate accidental drag'n'drop actions (for tap-style dragging);
Trackpad++ Control Module for adjusting the Trackpad settings (finally, all the Trackpad settings put together in a single place!);
Full, native support of the Windows® 7 (32-bit) and Windows® 7 (64-bit) operating systems.
The software is free or you can make a small donation to the guy and get a licence code.
http://trackpad.powerplan7.com/ - Trackpad ++
http://powerplan7.com/home.htm - Power Plan Assistant
Features of trackpad ++:
>>NEW<< Unleashed multitouch capabilities: support of 3-finger and 4-finger gestures (tapping, back/forward, zoom in/out, show/hide all windows);
Dramatically improved two-finger scrolling experience: Mac® OS X Lion-similar (accelerated/natural) scrolling model implemented;
Improved pointer ballistics (i.e. how a pointer speed depends on a finger speed; six optimal presets built-in);
Bug-free dragging with two fingers (both fingers allowed to move freely), option to increase the pointer speed while dragging;
User-customizable option to ignore accidental trackpad input when typing, option to eliminate accidental drag'n'drop actions (for tap-style dragging);
Trackpad++ Control Module for adjusting the Trackpad settings (finally, all the Trackpad settings put together in a single place!);
Full, native support of the Windows® 7 (32-bit) and Windows® 7 (64-bit) operating systems.
The software is free or you can make a small donation to the guy and get a licence code.
*yawn* I could really care less. go start a fight with someone else. clearly the OP doesn't know what he's doing, but if you disagree i don't care. at. all. lol
Google Geekbench. Just run that for both. This will test the CPU and RAM. If you want to test graphics run cinebench.
Humor me, show me that he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about in regards to his ability to perform his job. He clearly is (or was) unsure of the best path to take to get his software to run most efficiently. You are extending that to mean he is clueless in his job as well.
Not picking a fight here, just trying to figure out where your opinion on this is coming from.
But if you want to just keep speaking in generalities and being passive-aggressive, then have at it.
Hello,
Some feedback, with additional ideas and options:
Conveniences of using Parallels:
-- When enabling all cores, I have found that CPU-intensive apps in Parallels work 95%+ as fast as real Windows on most types of stuff.
-- Mac power management seems to works better if you run Windows in Parallels rather than Boot Camp.
-- You can multitask using the Mac for other things while Windows runs in the background. You can thus do other productive things.
-- The bonus is that you have convenient backups of virtual hard disks as individual files, so you can "reinstall Windows" or "rollback Windows" in seconds or minutes (an advantage of choosing virtualization). It is easy to back up, because backing up a virtualized Windows hard disk is as easy as backing up a single large file.
-- You can very easily copy virtual hard disks (as files) between Mac's, so you've essentially transferred your copy of Windows -- and all its apps, users, desktop, files and settings -- just simply by copying one big file.
-- If you are a person who has to reinstall Windows occasionally or go to clean installation of Windows on occasion, the time saved with virtualization can be worth it.
-- You can download a free trial of Parallels, and install your old copy of Windows, do a test, and see if it runs fast enough -- before paying for it.
-- You can download a free trial of Windows 7 (legal!) to install in your free trial of Parallels. Zero dollars for testing before you decide you want to buy....
-- You can migrate your Windows partition between Parallels and Boot Camp in the future, or run the same Windows partition in both (switching between performance versus ability to multitask with Mac apps)
Some notes:
-- Does your data analysis requires hours of CPU everyday? If not, then keeping your Mac may be best. Even if it takes 15 minutes longer per day, you're saving money, and you get to keep multitasking.
-- Consider running your processing job overnight
-- Your data analysis might even be disk-bound. If so, then buying a new laptop may NOT help very much unless you make an SSD upgrade (if transaction bound) or RAID upgrade (if throughput bound). That will require you to spend more than $1200 for a laptop. Might as well keep the Mac. If your Mac has a thunderbolt port, you can later upgrade to an external enclosure.
-- The only situation where it really makes sense to switch to Windows is if the data analysis will require tieing up your computer for hours everyday, and you really need a 4-core or 6-core CPU.
-- Does your processing software support multi-core CPU? If it's old processing software, then multiple cores don't matter much.
-- Boot Camp: If you're plugged in during the times you plan to run analyses, who cares about power management? (except for saving a few pennies a year off your electric bill, of course -- even without good power management, laptops already are far more efficient than desktops.)
-- [If you have LOTS of processing to do, and faster processing easily means more money.] Alternatively, you need cheap CPU processing/rendering/etc for grunt work, you could perhaps get a cheap Windows tower PC with a fast 4-core or a budget 6-core CPU. You can process data several times faster than a laptop for only a few hundred dollars (budget motherboard with integrated graphics, good CPU, NO need for expensive graphics card (GPU) and NO need for expensive big power supply unless your statistics software uses GPGPU/CUDA/etc for GPU processing). Don't buy a computer monitor. Use your HDTV as your computer monitor temporarily until you've got Remote Desktop, then relegate the computer to a corner to do data processing while you enjoy your Mac and using your Windows computer via Remote Desktop or VNC. Presto, solution for LESS than $500 WHOLE computer, Windows pre-installed, including at least 4 cores. Newegg sells AMD 6-core CPU's between $139 to $169. So for just a few hundred, you could pull off a statistic crunching desktop tower that processes data MORE than three times as fast as your Mac, without needing to sell your Mac! Just Remote Desktop -- Microsoft has Remote Desktop for Mac available! This might potentially be similiar to the difference between selling your mac and buying a Dell (including taxes, shipping, and respective extended warranty). And still runs CPU-based stuff much faster. Obviously, that's if you need to run enough processing that overnight runs are required.
-- now, despite the problems and complaints, I should note that even Boot Camp on a Mac is still a better experience than many cheap Windows laptops. Even the better Dell ones. (can test with free trial of Windows 7) Your consideration may be processing speed, and only if your processing software is the type that ties up a computer for hours everyday consistently.
Some feedback, with additional ideas and options:
Conveniences of using Parallels:
-- When enabling all cores, I have found that CPU-intensive apps in Parallels work 95%+ as fast as real Windows on most types of stuff.
-- Mac power management seems to works better if you run Windows in Parallels rather than Boot Camp.
-- You can multitask using the Mac for other things while Windows runs in the background. You can thus do other productive things.
-- The bonus is that you have convenient backups of virtual hard disks as individual files, so you can "reinstall Windows" or "rollback Windows" in seconds or minutes (an advantage of choosing virtualization). It is easy to back up, because backing up a virtualized Windows hard disk is as easy as backing up a single large file.
-- You can very easily copy virtual hard disks (as files) between Mac's, so you've essentially transferred your copy of Windows -- and all its apps, users, desktop, files and settings -- just simply by copying one big file.
-- If you are a person who has to reinstall Windows occasionally or go to clean installation of Windows on occasion, the time saved with virtualization can be worth it.
-- You can download a free trial of Parallels, and install your old copy of Windows, do a test, and see if it runs fast enough -- before paying for it.
-- You can download a free trial of Windows 7 (legal!) to install in your free trial of Parallels. Zero dollars for testing before you decide you want to buy....
-- You can migrate your Windows partition between Parallels and Boot Camp in the future, or run the same Windows partition in both (switching between performance versus ability to multitask with Mac apps)
Some notes:
-- Does your data analysis requires hours of CPU everyday? If not, then keeping your Mac may be best. Even if it takes 15 minutes longer per day, you're saving money, and you get to keep multitasking.
-- Consider running your processing job overnight
-- Your data analysis might even be disk-bound. If so, then buying a new laptop may NOT help very much unless you make an SSD upgrade (if transaction bound) or RAID upgrade (if throughput bound). That will require you to spend more than $1200 for a laptop. Might as well keep the Mac. If your Mac has a thunderbolt port, you can later upgrade to an external enclosure.
-- The only situation where it really makes sense to switch to Windows is if the data analysis will require tieing up your computer for hours everyday, and you really need a 4-core or 6-core CPU.
-- Does your processing software support multi-core CPU? If it's old processing software, then multiple cores don't matter much.
-- Boot Camp: If you're plugged in during the times you plan to run analyses, who cares about power management? (except for saving a few pennies a year off your electric bill, of course -- even without good power management, laptops already are far more efficient than desktops.)
-- [If you have LOTS of processing to do, and faster processing easily means more money.] Alternatively, you need cheap CPU processing/rendering/etc for grunt work, you could perhaps get a cheap Windows tower PC with a fast 4-core or a budget 6-core CPU. You can process data several times faster than a laptop for only a few hundred dollars (budget motherboard with integrated graphics, good CPU, NO need for expensive graphics card (GPU) and NO need for expensive big power supply unless your statistics software uses GPGPU/CUDA/etc for GPU processing). Don't buy a computer monitor. Use your HDTV as your computer monitor temporarily until you've got Remote Desktop, then relegate the computer to a corner to do data processing while you enjoy your Mac and using your Windows computer via Remote Desktop or VNC. Presto, solution for LESS than $500 WHOLE computer, Windows pre-installed, including at least 4 cores. Newegg sells AMD 6-core CPU's between $139 to $169. So for just a few hundred, you could pull off a statistic crunching desktop tower that processes data MORE than three times as fast as your Mac, without needing to sell your Mac! Just Remote Desktop -- Microsoft has Remote Desktop for Mac available! This might potentially be similiar to the difference between selling your mac and buying a Dell (including taxes, shipping, and respective extended warranty). And still runs CPU-based stuff much faster. Obviously, that's if you need to run enough processing that overnight runs are required.
-- now, despite the problems and complaints, I should note that even Boot Camp on a Mac is still a better experience than many cheap Windows laptops. Even the better Dell ones. (can test with free trial of Windows 7) Your consideration may be processing speed, and only if your processing software is the type that ties up a computer for hours everyday consistently.
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Agree, but I needed a real world example that I can frame in actual context. ~TWICE as fast on the Mac (via Bootcamp or VM) vs PC to complete that actual task is the metric I was looking for
The SSD-based macs (including the rMBP) even in VMWARE/Parallels certainly run circles around HDD-based PC's.Agree, but I needed a real world example that I can frame in actual context. ~TWICE as fast on the Mac (via Bootcamp or VM) vs PC to complete that actual task is the metric I was looking for
Even my slow 1.4Ghz Macbook Air (SSD) runs Visual Studio for development in Windows faster (in Parallels), than my desktop 3Ghz PC (HDD) running Windows directly.
Most of the performance boost you mention, unfortunately, isn't applicable to the OP because his MBP that he currently has (at current budget) almost certainly doesn't have an SSD. The SSD definitely dramatically speeds up processing of large files much faster than a CPU.
That's also why it's important to find out if the processing is disk-bound or CPU-bound. If disk-bound, a slow laptop with an SSD will often run circles around a fast laptop with an old-fashioned spinnng hard disk drive.
Not sure why this thread is going on so long. Just bootcamp or run parallels to run Windows 7. Nothing more to buy, other than maybe a windows 7 license.