Which uses less battery.Bootcamp or parallels?

[Radon87000]

I need to run Tally accounting software for work which does not have a Mac equivalaent so I can either bootcamp with Windows 8.1 but battery life is lesser in Windows or run it in Windows 8.1 Parallels which is better for me.But does the parallels method use less battery than bootcamp?If so I will buy the software

 

[RMo]

I'm not sure anyone has actually done a scientific comparison, but a reasonable assumption is that Boot Camp would consume less power than Parallels, since with Boot Camp you're just running Windows, whereas with Parallels you're running two OSes at the same time. (This is perhaps the reason no one has tested it that I'm aware of, and while I'd also assume it's the case, I wouldn't quite say that with 100% confidence since there are other variables at play--like the fact that Apple has optimized OS X for the hardware it's running on, but we can't necessarily say the same about Apple's Windows drivers for Boot Camp, so maybe power management isn't as good.)

That being said, with Boot Camp, as I'm sure you're aware, you'll have to reboot. I guess Windows 8.1 stars up fast enough and newer versions of OS X aren't that bad either (especially on an SSD), but if you have to do this often you may get annoyed. There is also the time it takes to reboot, which depending on how often you do this or how long you spend in Windows may also affect your battery life, though again Boot Camp might still come out on top.

Personally, I'd do whatever I can afford and whatever annoys me less. Boot Camp is free, whereas Parallels is not, and if you keep upgrading OS X (or Windows), you may have to keep upgrading Parallels every year or two (not free) in order to remain compatible. If you don't mind the rebooting, Boot Camp might come out on top for you.

 

[iterva]

The only reason i would run bootcamp is if i would want to play some game that requires windows. Tried bootcamp a few years back but all that rebooting when needing to switch OS was too frustrating.

With that said, i use Parallels where i have a few VM:s, one of them is Win8.1. In parallels i have chosen "Longer battery life" over "Better performance" for the 8.1 VM which gives an increase in battery life by reducing performance. Thus the battery hit i get is minor (acceptable) when running it.
Worth mentioning is that i do not run any process heavy apps in windows.

 

[Significant1]

I have better experience with Vmware Fusion than parallels regarding battery. People say, that latest Parallels har fixed this. I am not going back though, although the product is good, I despise the business practice (upgrade prices and add's in an expensive paid app).

Personally I have become quite happy with making app's work in wineskin http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-index.php (Winebottler is another alternative). It uses Wine to translate windows api to OSX and the end result can be run just like a normal OSX app (will look like an windows app). It easier on ressources and does not require a windows license. But it requires you to technically inclined, to get working, because it can require a lot of tweaking (and in my experience xquartz must also be installed http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/). Also it only works with 32bit windows apps. WineHQ DB is a good place to check, if someone already tried:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=328

edit: Crossover is a commercial variant https://www.codeweavers.com/products/

 

[keysofanxiety]

Bootcamp is considerably better on battery life, and you'll also get much better hardware/software performance as it's not running virtually.

You can also set up a Bootcamp partition and use Parallels to access that, so that way you can boot into the VM if you need to quickly do some work, rather than restarting/loading into Bootcamp. As you get the best of both worlds that way, I'd suggest setting up Bootcamp and also installing Parallels.