VMWare Fusion Users

Discussion in 'MacBook Air' started by mpaquette, Jan 13, 2012.

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  1. mpaquette, Jan 13, 2012

    mpaquette macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2010
    Location:
    Columbia, SC
    #1
    Looking for feedback from anyone that uses VMWare Fusion on their MacBook Air. Does it perform well when running Windows 7 in a VM? I was concerned about running out of memory with only 4GB, but then figured that any paging done to the SSD would be much faster vs. a spindle drive. So in reality, a VM may perform better on an Air with 4GB of RAM vs. a MBP with 4GB of RAM and a spindle drive. Just looking for some real world results.
     
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  2. paulrbeers, Jan 13, 2012

    paulrbeers macrumors 68040

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2009
    #2
    On my MBA, I use fusion with Windows XP so I only need to use a VM with 1GB of RAM (or less). I never notice any slow down. On my MBP, I use Windows 7, but I can a lot 2GB easily (probably 3 if I really wanted to), since it has 8GB of RAM. You could probably get away with a 2GB VM for Windows 7 on the MBA if you wanted to, but since I only use Windows for a handful of programs, windows XP works just fine for me.

    However, you are right, due to the SSD the impact of Paging is reduced. I still wish the MBA had an option for 8GB of RAM though.
     
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  3. mpaquette, Jan 13, 2012

    mpaquette thread starter macrumors regular

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2010
    Location:
    Columbia, SC
    #3
    Thank you for the info. I only use XP in Fusion as well at this point. I use it to run some old terminal emulation stuff for work. And for that, XP seems to work the best. I just figured at some point in the next year or 2, I'd have to start using Windows 7.
     
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  4. kjlake, Jan 13, 2012

    kjlake macrumors member

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2010
    #4
    I use vmWare fusion with both Win 7 and Linux virtual machines. The Win 7 vm works fine with 1GB of RAM assigned to it for the tasks that I use that vm for. I have some software that is Win Specific that I need to run on occasion. I don't think that it would work very well if the software you need to run is very RAM intensive though.

    The only time I have an issue with performance is if I have multiple virtual machines open at the same time...

    Regards

    Kevin
     
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