Your experience - VMware on 11.6" MBA ?

[SammySlim]

FWIW I am running Ubuntu in VirtualBox on a 1.4/2GB MBA 11 and it runs just as fast as it does on my iMac with 4 GB. You are going to be fine.

Cheers

 

[gwsat]

Hi Everyone,

Loaded Fusion 3.1 and loaded Win 7 in it. Given the new MBAs are pretty fast (and I got the 11.6" ultimate edition) I don't see a huge performance hit. Actually its better than my MBP 17" with GB RAM and Parallels 6 ! No issues here.

I have loaded smart draw in the VM and that seems to work fine too.... The Win 7 plus Smart draw took up space which I guess i unavoidable.... Now I have to carry stuff on external disk...

Guess problem solved.... as there is nothing else to do / try.

Thanks everyone.

I don't know how to close the thread but I guess this is thread closure.

I had a hunch that Windows 7 in a VMware Fusion VM would run just about as well on an 11 inch Ultimate MBA as it does on a 13 inch Ultimate MBA. I have 40GB reserved for the VM but right now it uses only about 16 GB. I leave a couple of Windows apps open in Unity mode on the OS X desktop, along with half a dozen OS X apps and it has worked like a charm. The setup is just as stable and almost as fast on the MBA as it is on my MBP, which has 6GB of RAM. The only significant difference between the 11 inch Ultimate and 13 inch Ultimate MBA is the 11 inch model's slightly slower chip, 1.6Ghz compared to the 13 inch model's 2.13Ghz processor. When it comes to RAM, fusion is, indeed, a hog, but it really doesn't make inordinate demands on the processor. I have 2GB of RAM and 1 processor core dedicated to the Fusion VM and that's plenty.

By the way, Microsoft has done a good job of rolling out updates for Windows 7 that counter the latest nastiness the hackers dream up. I have been running Windows 7 for nearly a year and haven't had the slightest problem with malware. I wish I could say the same about XP, which I am still using on my desktop PC.