Can A MacBook/MacBook Air Run Parallels?
 

Hey Mac guys and PC geeks, I have a question. I'm going to buy a MacBook to use as my personal laptop and my work laptop.

In "work mode", it will be running Parallels/Windows 7, a couple of models in Excel/for Windows locally in Parallels (because Excel/for Mac is a useless POS), a remote desktop in Citrix, and Chrome browser.

My question is, will a 11" MacBook Air be powerful enough to do this? The specs would be 1.6 GHz dual Core i7 (optionally 2.2 GHz dual Core i7) and 4 GB DRAM (optionally 8 GB).

If so, would the new 12" MacBook be powerful enough? The specs there are 1.1 GHz dual Core M and 8 GB DRAM.

The MacBook interests me because of the Retina screen, but it is hardly any lighter/thinner than the MacBook Air, so I won't choose it if the Core M processor is going to be a hindrance.

Both will run it but I'd use the Air with 8 GB of RAM.

Does the Air have an SSD? I think they all do now, can't recall.

If yes just another reason to go with the Air.

Yes, the MacBook Air is SSD-only. As is the MacBook.

Probably but not optimally. I run a MacBook Pro (late 2011 model) with 16GB RAM and it runs parallels okay. When it had just 8GB RAM it still worked but not quite as well. You can pull up the specs on that unit and compare to the new MacBook Air. I suspect the Pro is still more powerful but a new Air is... well... new and technology catches up quickly so even a "less powerful" Air might be nearly comparable to a "more powerful" Pro from a few years ago.

I suspect you'll be able to run fine - your battery life might be poor off line power though (if you're going to run that way at all).

Thinking about the exact usage: when I'm at conferences and meetings during the day, I'd be running
- Excel/Windows 7 in Parallels, probably just a couple of moderate size spreadsheets.
- Citrix/Mac with a financial application (Factset).
- Outlook webmail in Chrome/Mac
- Battery power

Back in the hotel I'd
- plug in a second monitor (I found some slim 13" monitors that aren't much thicker than a MacBook Air), to run the above apps with dual screens
- AC power

I wouldn't need great performance but don't want beach balls.

Seems I'd clearly want to get 8GB DRAM. I'm not sure if the faster processor would be important.




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The processor is important because you can set the VM to use a dedicated number of cores.

Link? Monoprice?

Stuff like
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00H4HCNLQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?qid=1427844932&sr=1-12&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70

Just remember if you go for the MacBook don't get the latest with it's stupid single USB-c port.

You might want to take a look at Office 2016 for Mac before you go off and determine that you need to run parallels to run Excel. It is considerably different than the version released a few years back,

Office 2016 for Mac finally catches up to its Windows equivalent | The Verge

Does it have to do it in parallels, or could you set it up for dual boot?

I suppose I could boot it into native Windows. I don't know much about that. A little reading I did suggested that parallels works better than boot camp, but I don't have any real knowledge.

I run Parallels on my 2011 MacBook Pro and it works perfectly running out Access-based order entry and invoicing system

The better way to do that is Boot Camp first, then when you set up Parallels you tell it to use the boot camp partition as it's virtual drive.

Best of both worlds and not really any extra work all things considered.

That way if you find you need all the Macs cpu and RAM for Windows you can reboot into it native.

Boot camp is cake.

There is a guided app on the Mac to set it up.

I personally can't stand boot camp because I don't like having to reboot the machine each time. With parallels you run both at the same time. If there were Mac versions of Autodesk Revit, formZ and a few other things I use I'd get rid of the windows part altogether but until that happens parallels is the best option I think

Any reason you don't just run your needed MS apps on your citrix desktop? Or will you be working without internet connectivity?

If you are running work apps on your personal machine you do risk it be taken by your company in case of a discovery, but then I don't know the risk of litigation your company is exposed to.

I have a MB Pro, run Parallels and Win 7 just fine. I don't get the Excel for Mac is a piece of crap statement though. Do you have any experience on a MacBook?

Excel for Mac runs better on a Mac than Win 7. In fact, now that I have gotten it dialed in, it's really powerful. I run multi-tab spreadsheets that are more elaborate than a "moderate" size. I despise Chrome though.

Still means I have to run Visio in Unity on Fusion. Fail Microsoft!

The benefit of using Boot Camp for the virtual hard disk is you have the option to reboot native if you need to.

As good as Fusion and Parallels are there are still occasions, mostly hardware related, that running native is the only option.

Certainly more of an issue on desktops than laptops.

My Infinity PCI cards will run in my MacPros when booted to Windows under boot camp but not under a VM.

There is one caveat to running the boot camp partition as your VM's disc, you can't suspend it, a total OS shut down inside the VM is required.

I find it a minor issue since booting the OS does not take much more time resuming from suspend. Although admittedly the suspend allows you to leave all apps and work open.

Which way to go really depends on what you are using Windows for and how often.

I use Macs at home and have Excel/Mac. I use PCs at work and pretty much live in Excel/Windows. Excel/Mac is a POS if you are a power user of Excel/Windows because the keystroke shortcuts are different, the menus are different, not all the functIons are available, it won't run many macros, there is no Visual Basic, and add-ins for specialist financial applications don't work for Excel/Mac. Basically Excel/Mac has always been a rather crippled version of Excel, and I suspect Microsoft did that deliberately, for obvious reasons.

From the initial reviews I've read, Excel/Mac 2016 addresses the keystroke shortcut problem but nothing else.

I can't use something almost the same as Excel/Windows, it has to be exactly the same. If the third party add-ins don't support Excel/Mac, for example, that's game over.

The other option is using Excel/Windows via Remote Desktop/Citrix, but the latency makes that a pain the in rear, and the Citrix Mac client doesn't support the same keystroke combos. And of course you need a good internet connection, so no working on planes etc.

Thus I have to find some way to run Excel/Windows locally.

Your citrix admins can setup Flexcast so you can use your apps even while disconnected.

Have you given Numbers and Pages a go? They're actually quite good and I think better than Excel and Word in many ways. I use them almost exclusively now. Yes, the export to MS Office works well too.

Might be worth a try - not to be a fanboy or anything, but they run great on the Mac (and iPad) and the seamless cloud-based updating is a great feature for people that are constantly getting their days chopped up into small pieces rather than having a lot of time to work a task through to completion all the time.

I have played with Numbers and Pages a bit, but not seriously. Of the alternatives to MS Office, I've probably used Google Docs and Open Office most.

I think you need to look at a Dell laptop. To be honest with yourself, ask if a Mac really is designed for you.

Ugh, no more Dells for me. I've had Dell, HP, Toshiba, Compaq and the only PC laptop I ever liked was the IBM Thinkpads - and I liked those a lot. But I banished PCs from my house many years ago, we have a Mac only environment at home. Since this will do double duty for personal and work, I'd like to keep things all-Mac.

I like Macs because they are very well built, smartly designed, last a long time, have a great OS, don't come loaded with poorly designed OEM bloatware. Bought the kids MacBook Airs (2014), which have been great; the wife's MacBook Pro (2011) is going strong (and I have a 16 GB RAM + SSD upgrade ready to go in).

I just think a Dell or other high end PC laptop with a clean Win 7 install is the way to go.

I occasionally run VMware (Fusion) on my 2012 i7 Air with Win2008R2 Server and SQL Server for work, when I need a self-contained server to run our software on the road. It works fine but responsiveness lags sometime - to me it's miraculous that this is possible at all. No experience with Parallels.

Well then the VM sounds like the way to go.

If you have a current work issued PC laptop you can clone that to a VM and it will bring along all the work related security and any unique requirements that might be needed for accessing VPN and company hosted backend.

I did exactly that when I worked for CA.

They issued me a Dell that I only used for email / calendars and certain corporate functions. 90% of my day was spent using my Mac.

I hated having to carry both so I cloned the Dell to a VM and ran that for 2 years while the Dell sat in a drawer in my office collecting dust.

When I left I dumped the VM image back to the Dell and IT was none the wiser.

I came across this comparison of Parallels, Fusion & VirtualBox. This may prove helpful when evaluating the direction that you want to go.

VM Benchmarks - Parallels 10 vs. Fusion 7 vs. VirtualBox

Okay, I've decided what I'm buying. MacBook Pro Retina 13" 16GB DRAM.

I know you were all waiting in suspense!

Can you swing the 15"? It's worth it.

I can afford it, but the extra size and weight might not be a good trade-off. I described my usage, above. Do you think quad-core and discrete graphics will make much difference to me?. I have always considered myself a pretty lightweight user.

How is rebooting (even "native") a benefit? I don't see it as a benefit at all. One thing I utterly hate about windows machines is the fact that in most cases (even now) after installing any new driver, making any change to the registry settings or adding / removing any sort of hardware you have to waste five minutes of your life waiting for a reboot. Reboots are complete wastes of time IMHO - anything that can be done to avoid them is a benefit. This is one HUGE advantage to Linux / Apple devices. Far fewer reboots in general. I once had my Linux server up for over two years continuously without a reboot. Let's see Windows anything do that.

Yes, I run parallels on my old Air as well as office. I really like Parallels but you do need SSD and as much RAM as possible to get the most out of it. With the newer Air's it shouldn't be a problem, same for Powerbook

I don't disagree. I hate rebooting and my .nix boxes never get shut down either.

My desktops are all dual boot since I have a need to run some very specific pieces of hardware that can not be addressed from a VM.

My laptops only run VM's and are not set up to dual boot.

It may have been a configuration issue but we had varying experiences running spreadsheets on Excel within Parallels. We had about 95% compatibility. That mysterious 5% was a real PIA.

Before you make the purchase it might be worth testing the spreadsheets first.

Updating.

I bought a MacBook Pro 13" Retina.

During setup, I accepted the default FileVault hard drive encryption option. I now wonder if that was a good idea. Any views on the pros and cons?

Hey guys, what the best place and way to buy Windows 7, to install on my Mac via Parallels? I see prices from $55 to $140, am not sure which are for real, whether I should get Home or Professional, and whether there is a good reason to buy it on disc or via download? Any advice? Thanks.

Disclaimer: I did not read the whole thread.

But...

I have been there with parallels. I would recommend installing vmware fusion, installing a Windows 7 VM, and use both at the same time. Running Windows 7 on my MB pro under fusion was almost faster than on native hardware.

Pro, get a disc.

A lot of the stuff you see for sale is nothing more than the key taken from a recycled PC.

That's how I get the bulk of my Win licenses, buy someones POS broken PC for $25 to snag the key sticker. I've been known to pull over on trash day if there is a PC sitting out and grab the key sticker.

Completely legit.