Want to get a MBP, question about running win7 with VMware

[jetblk328i]

Hey everybody, I'm going to college next year and seriously looking at the 13 in MBP. I think it's the perfect blend of portability, power, etc.

However, I will need to run Windows 7 Professional, as I will need to run the app Minitab, which is for PC only.

I was talking to a fellow classmate who i would consider a computer geek. He knows much more than i do and he explained how I could run 7 on a MBP.

Here's what he said:

1.Buy MBP, VMWare 3, a copy of vista.

2. Install the vista into the VMWare 3 and have vista set up as the virtual machine.

3. Go to windows' students 741 webpage and "upgrade" to 7.

4.do the upgrade.

5. Done, now I can start VMWare3 with windows 7 and install any PC apps like Minitab and run with VMWare.

Is this correct? Is there a simpler way? I am a bit concerned with the "upgrade" part of the procedure. I would like to install 7 from the get go but 299.99 for windows 7 pro is too expensive.

Thanks!

 

[balamw]

Is this correct? Is there a simpler way? I am a bit concerned with the "upgrade" part of the procedure. I would like to install 7 from the get go but 299.99 for windows 7 pro is too expensive.

Correct.

If you are OK with choosing Windows or OS X you can use Boot Camp instead of VMWare.

The full retail version of Windows is the only way you get maximum flexibilty and stay fully legit with your licenses. The win741 deal, retail upgrade and OEM versions are all cheaper and will work, but it is not clear you are within the license and need to accept some limitations of the licenses.

Do you really need Pro, or could Minitab run on Home Premium? It's only $150 from Amazon.

B

 

[jetblk328i]

Yes.. The school says that 7 pro is required. Is there any benefitt to running bootcamp instead of vmware?

Also, I know that you must partition ram for the virtual machine. If I am not running vmware i should have full ram on my osx right?

 

[DoFoT9]

Yes.. The school says that 7 pro is required. Is there any benefitt to running bootcamp instead of vmware?

how hardware intense is that program? if its not very, then virtualisation will be fine

Also, I know that you must partition ram for the virtual machine. If I am not running vmware i should have full ram on my osx right?

yes lol thats correct. you can choose how much RAM you actually want allocate to the VM. from 256mb up to near full RAM on the computer. i would recommend 8GB RAM for running VMs though.

 

[balamw]

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It's stupid, but you can get home premium and the anytime upgrade to pro for cheaper than pro itself. $220 now via amazon.

More RAM is important as is a fast HDD, if you can afford the SSD and it is large enough for you an 8GB SSD solution would be best.

B

 

[DoFoT9]

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More RAM is important as is a fast HDD, if you can afford the SSD and it is large enough for you an 8GB SSD solution would be best.

B

you would go for the more RAM though instead of faster hard drive in this case.

 

[balamw]

you would go for the more RAM though instead of faster hard drive in this case.

aeying might disagree with you. https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/9968248/ The SSD is also much faster than going from 5400->7200 or something like that, so I'd hedge my bets.

B

 

[JNB]

i would recommend 8GB RAM for running VMs though.

I have a MBP with 4GB, allocate 2GB for my VM's (including Server 2008 64-bit) and it runs just fine, and that includes the instance of Oracle 11 in there as well. More would obviously be better, but I haven't had any issues thus far. For Win7, I'd stick with the base RAM and allocate half of it, and only upgrade if performance dictated.

 

[DoFoT9]

aeying might disagree with you. https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/9968248/ The SSD is also much faster than going from 5400->7200 or something like that, so I'd hedge my bets.

B

fair enough point, but why has vmware been designed in such a way that its dependent on the HDD. with RAM becoming faster and cheaper, i thought they would have used it more.

I have a MBP with 4GB, allocate 2GB for my VM's (including Server 2008 64-bit) and it runs just fine, and that includes the instance of Oracle 11 in there as well. More would obviously be better, but I haven't had any issues thus far. For Win7, I'd stick with the base RAM and allocate half of it, and only upgrade if performance dictated.

on my imac i7 i had 4GB RAM. 1GB allocated for OSX Server, and 3GB for everything else. its a TOTAL dog. if i had 8GB RAM+ i feel that i would not suffer any of the 5min slow downs that i currently do.
page ins: 36GB
page outs: 22GB
swap used: 8.5GB.

12GB RAM coming soon thank god.

 

[balamw]

on my imac i7 i had 4GB RAM. 1GB allocated for OSX Server, and 3GB for everything else. its a TOTAL dog. if i had 8GB RAM+ i feel that i would not suffer any of the 5min slow downs that i currently do.

Is OS X server your host OS? What's "everything else"? Are you running OS X server as a VM + OS X + Windows?

It sounds to me like you are just starving OS X server of resources once you get to the point where it needs to be paging stuff out to disk, you're done. An SSD would probably help a lot if you force it to swap to disk.

Yours does not seem to be a typical configuration. As JNB says I'm pretty comfortable with running a 2GB VM on a 4 GB OS X system. Performance is not a screamer, but is definitely useable.

B

 

[DoFoT9]

Is OS X server your host OS? What's "everything else"? Are you running OS X server as a VM + OS X + Windows?

It sounds to me like you are just starving OS X server of resources once you get to the point where it needs to be paging stuff out to disk, you're done. An SSD would probably help a lot if you force it to swap to disk.

Yours does not seem to be a typical configuration. As JNB says I'm pretty comfortable with running a 2GB VM on a 4 GB OS X system. Performance is not a screamer, but is definitely useable.

B

sorry i guess i should have explained it a tad better.

i virtualise OSX Server on parallels - it is allocated 1GB RAM.

my main OS is OSX SL 10.6, which has the remaining 3GB of RAM.

the virtual memory data i listed before was from my "actual" OS - my 1GB OSX Server VM is parallels is as follows:
page ins: 23GB
page outs: 12GB
swap: 3.8GB

keep in mind it only has 1GB RAM

as its my iMac and main machine (therefore lacking the ability to add more drive inside it) and i use ALOT of storage. therefore i will be upgrading to 12GB RAM for the time being, and 16GB hopefully soon.

 

[vistadude]

Get the 15 inch macbook. The 13 inch has too small of a screen and too low resolution, especially for minitab.

 

[jetblk328i]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

It's stupid, but you can get home premium and the anytime upgrade to pro for cheaper than pro itself. $220 now via amazon.

More RAM is important as is a fast HDD, if you can afford the SSD and it is large enough for you an 8GB SSD solution would be best.

B

Hmm are you talking about the741 student pro sale? If so, I would guess you need to run the upgrade entirely in the vm right?

 

[balamw]

Hmm are you talking about the741 student pro sale? If so, I would guess you need to run the upgrade entirely in the vm right?

No. That could work too!

Since Vista, MS has made it easy to upgrade which edition of Windows you are running. They call it Anytime Upgrade and just give you a new product key. All the code is on the disc you originally installed from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Anytime_Upgrade

sorry i guess i should have explained it a tad better.

Looks like you definitely need all that RAM for something, but you realize your situation is not "usual" right?

B