Thread

I’ve just landed a project that’s going to require me to be on the road at client sites very often. While there, I’ll need to use lots of their proprietary Windows-only apps through their networks. There’s no way around it, I need a PC.

After looking and pricing, I just cannot stand the thought of sinking my own money (my business’s) into a Dell laptop: I’m a Mac fanboy true to the core. A desktop PC for testing and accounting is one of my necessary evils—but a laptop is a bigger deal/cost to me.

I’m hoping I can run Vista Business (a requirement) using VMware Fusion on a new MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM. Has anybody else tried this?

My main concern here is performance. Will 2GB RAM be enough, or will Vista hog the RAM and run at a crawl? I can spring a few hundred more for a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro configured with 2GB ($2,000) over a Dell running Vista Biz w/4GB RAM—because the value is clear. (Even adding the cost of VMware Fusion). But the extra $500 for the 2.66GHz with 4GB RAM is a back-breaker.

I’d really like to hear from folks who have run Windows on Macs. I’m partial to VMware over Parallells and Bootcamp, but experiences with any of these Windows-on-the-Mac options would be much appreciated.

I’ve run Windows via Parallels on my Black Macbook.  Less processor than an MBP but I did up it to 4gig ram.  Ran fine for what I needed.

I would recommend using the BTO option in the Apple Online Store to upgrade the 2.4ghz Macbook Pro from 2gig to 4gigs.  Everything you do, even outside of Windows, will be better with 4gigs of ram.  I have run Windows XP and Vista along with other OSs on both Parallels and Fusion on my 2.4ghz Macbook (unibody) w/4 gigs of ram with a ton of other things running at the same time, without concern.  You will love having more ram, more than you would the slight boost in CPU speed and the cost difference is a $400 savings if you do the ram upgrade through Apple.

VMWare Fusion anytime over Parallels. For me it was WAY faster and much easier to set up extras if required.

That and as much RAM as you can give to your machine of course.

Best wishes,

Mark

I like VMWare Fusion better too overall, Parallels boots Windows much faster than VMWare does, but overall VMWare runs Windows faster after boot.  Earlier on had issues running a few non-Windows OSs under Fusion, and no real speed differences for non-Windows OSs under either.  I still have Parallels licenses running on a couple of systems as I just have not gotten around to moving those systems to Fusion for one reason or another, so easy to compare them against each other each time there are updates 😊

I did not find Parallels v4 compared to latest version of Fusion to be really any harder or easier for setup of features/functions on the VM side though.  Of course great part about trial licenses is you can try out both and choose from there 😉

I run XP as my primary OS on my MBP using Bootcamp (never VMWare or Parallels) - there’s no point my adding more RAM is there, as XP can’t use it ...?

Please tell me if I’m mistaken - would love an excuse to stuff 4gb in!!

ta,
Smithy

I ran XP in Fusion on a year old MacBook 2GB for about 4 months without any issues. I upped the Ram to 4GB just for any extra overall performance but haven’t noticed any massive improvement.

I often have applications running in XP and recording the screen with Screenflow for video tutorials

I need Windows for several applications that are only available on it and thought Fusion would be useful in emergencies when I didn’t have my PC with me, but I have found that I haven’t switched on the PC for a few weeks now. The ability to share the same folders across the two platforms saves synchronisation issues as well.

There are occasional pauses when opening a shared folder but this is a minor inconvenience.

I also connect some unusual hardware via USB without any issues.

Parallels Desktop for cpu intensive applications and VM fusion for the rest. Bootcamp is the sensible solution if you have it.

Do not order memory through apple. they basically extort money for memory from the factory. Order the lessor machine and then when you get it order your memory from Crucial. Plenty of Fanboys such as myself use their memory and it is a TON cheaper. I upgraded to 4GB and use VMWare running Windows XP and am fine. I would think 4 would be fine for Vista as well but you may want to spring for 6GB just to be sure as Vista is a hog…

Do not order memory through apple. they basically extort money for memory from the factory. Order the lessor machine and then when you get it order your memory from Crucial. Plenty of Fanboys such as myself use their memory and it is a TON cheaper.

I just bought a new MacBook for travel. I had the Apple Store install the upgrade from the standard 2 gigs RAM to 4 gigs RAM. It cost $100 extra. Crucial’s price was about $70 plus shipping ($7.00 for express).

I upgraded to 4GB and use VMWare running Windows XP and am fine. I would think 4 would be fine for Vista as well but you may want to spring for 6GB just to be sure as Vista is a hog…

And you’d recommend using VMWare Fusion over Parallels? That’s what’s on my list. I’ve also found Windows Vista OEM from Amazon for less than $100.

I remember reading that Vista, though a hog, has some limits on RAM usage.

Damn… Just checked and you are right 😉 they lowered their prices something fierce. When I got my macbook pro it was something like 200-300 dollars to go from 2 to 4GB in RAM.

I do not have any experience with Parallels but I really like VMWare for what it does. It runs fast. Takes up as little space as I thought possible considering it is running some of the most bloated software known to man.

Damn… Just checked and you are right 😉 they lowered their prices something fierce. When I got my macbook pro it was something like 200-300 dollars to go from 2 to 4GB in RAM.

Which makes you think, “Hot dog, let’s get 8 gigs...” until you see the price difference when moving up to 8 gigs. I’d have to add a second mortgage.

I do not have any experience with Parallels but I really like VMWare for what it does. It runs fast. Takes up as little space as I thought possible considering it is running some of the most bloated software known to man.

I’ve read that VMWare performs better (faster) than Parallels so it’s likely I’ll go in that direction.

I found that going from 2 to 4GB RAM on my previous-gen MBP really helped the performance of VMWare (which I prefer over Parallels - I used both at some point).

I use a free app called VirtualBox

http://www.virtualbox.org/

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

Its a free VMWare like Solution.

Re: running some of the most bloated software known to man [MarcusNeto]

Hang on a minute, when I installed Leopard the default installation was 16gb - how is that NOT bloatware? Languages I’ll never speak and printers I’ll never own - just in case though, shove it all in.

Now, I don’t know about Vista because it seems to be sh!te, but a slim install of XP is only a couple of Gb.

my 2p.

Smithy