I trade options and am switching to a new broker that uses a Windows-based platform for trading. My hardware setup is a fully loaded 2012 MBA and two thunderbolt displays. I would like to be able to run Windows on one or both screens while keeping OSX up and running. What is my best choice....VMware or Parallels? As far as the trading platform, is there any reason to question whether a MBA would be powerful enough to run it? Is running Windows going to slow down the MBA?
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What is the best Windows option for my setup?
- Thread starter air23cary
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Parallels has a really nice GUI and is easy to use, setup just takes a while and when it has errors, it doesn't report what the errors are. It rarely does, however, and I like it a lot. As long as you have enough memory and you want to avoid Boot Camp, I'd advocate Parallels.
VMware Fusion has far better stability. If you have enough RAM, it should be fine. Parallels is very flaky and isn't as solid and stable as Fusion.
I disagree. I run Parallels daily without issue. The only issue I have with Parallels is they update more often than VMware and when you update all the virtual machine tools need to be up dated. I have 5 virtual machines so it is a process.
VMware's underlying technologies are used in their business/enterprise products that are used by Fortune 500 companies. Some of these products I work with every day. I find Parallels has better graphics performance but Fusion is far more stable and reliable. I have had several Parallels VMs corrupt across 3 versions of the software. But on all Fusion versions, I have yet to have a single corrupt VM.
Running two OS's could certainly slow down your computer, but not a lot if you have a fast processor and enough RAM. Running two monitors can also do the same thing.
I ran parallels and a couple programs with parallels and didn't get any slow down on the mac os side (it was an imac from 2010 or 2011 with 8 GB ram). Parallels or windows never crashed, the only thing I didn't like is that most keyboard shortcuts would not work within windows, which really slowed me down. I was about 5 times slower on a mac than on a windows machine because of the shortcuts.
On the other hand, I would rather have installed Fusion, but our IT department preferred parallels, probably out of cost reasons or preferred vendors agreements. A better option if you have the money is to use two computers, a pc and a mac, with synergy to share the keyboard and mouse.
I ran parallels and a couple programs with parallels and didn't get any slow down on the mac os side (it was an imac from 2010 or 2011 with 8 GB ram). Parallels or windows never crashed, the only thing I didn't like is that most keyboard shortcuts would not work within windows, which really slowed me down. I was about 5 times slower on a mac than on a windows machine because of the shortcuts.
On the other hand, I would rather have installed Fusion, but our IT department preferred parallels, probably out of cost reasons or preferred vendors agreements. A better option if you have the money is to use two computers, a pc and a mac, with synergy to share the keyboard and mouse.
Does synergy work well? Can you tell the difference between one and two computers?
Synergy does really work well, we use it one one of our setups that has 5 computers and 7 monitors (5 pcs, 1 mac, 1 linux) and you can easily move between all screens without any issues. Even if you restart one of the computers, after a few seconds, you have full mouse and keyboard control.