Should I switch to PC?

[leenak]

I was quite curious to compare Bootcamp vs VMWare as well. Pretty equivalent for this particular task

I decided to do Parallels and Bootcamp (not a requirement for Parallels but you can do it if you want). Only reason I did Bootcamp was to play the occasional windows-only game. For most other things, Parallels or VMWare should do the trick. I'm guessing VMWare on the Mac is like VMWare that I've used previously, where you get a workspace windows. Parallels is like VMWare except you don't get a separate windowed environment, it seems more integrated into OSX. And this is just me playing around with Parallels so I don't know all the features.

 

[manmit]

Solved.

Thank you everyone for taking valuable time and providng your suggestions and thoughts. truly appreciate it. finally switched to imac and installed boot camp and it is working like a charm.

 

[Beachguy]

Pick the right tool for the job at hand.

You. Nailed. It.

If it's a Windows app, and it supplies your livelihood, don't be a fanboi. Get a Windows machine with the power to do what you need. This doesn't mean you have to surrender your Mac. I have Macs, and I have PCs. Which I use depends on my need. When it comes to your work, it's a tool, not a religion.

----------

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!

Meaningless- twice as much memory in the Mac and two additional cores. As well, does the Dell also have an SSD of similar performance or are you on a HD?

 

[thekev]

My budget is limited. I spent $1200 on macbook pro and in order to get power pc I would need to spend another $1000. I am still not at that stage where I can spend so much :-(

Bootcamp does have certain driver issues and things. If it's a complex task, it may take some research and/or testing to ensure that everything you need is fully supported. What I don't understand is that you're being hired for this, yet no computer is provided and you're not paid at a level where you can budget for a secondary machine. That sounds like it sucks.