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I am a Windows/Web developer by profession and I have been considering a MacBook Pro as a replacement for my current development machine. I am impressed by the build quality, the uni-body construction and performance specs of the MacBook Pro. I am specifically interested in the 13.3" MacBook Pro running Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz processor with 4 GB RAM.
What I am wondering is this ... what performance can I expect running SQL Server 2008, IIS, and Visual Studio 2010 within a virtual environment (VMWare Fusion and Windows 7) on the above mentioned MacBook Pro?
I like the 13.3" model as the size is more portable, but am I expecting to much from a core 2 duo processor? Would I need to look at the next step up in MacBook Pro using the core i5 processor?
Thanks!
2Why use virtualization? You can set up dual booting via Boot Camp and run Windows natively, with much better performance than virtualization would ever be able to give you. – hbw – 2010-04-19T02:52:28.187
Primarily because I don't want to have to setup email, IM, and other ancillary apps in Windows. By using virtualization I could develop in Windows but quickly switch out to OSX for email and the like. Also by running Windows natively I loose support for the track pad features and battery performance which to me are fairly important. – webworm – 2010-04-19T03:19:02.720
You can just as easily reboot into OS X for email and the like. You're going to make some sacrifices but the performance hit isn't worth it in my opinion. – Josh K – 2010-04-19T03:26:32.457
1I'm convinced that the performance hit you take working a whole day in a properly configured VM will not add up to the time lost by even a single reboot. – Console – 2010-04-19T08:20:44.060
You need more RAM. Been there, done that! – Matt H – 2012-06-15T03:27:13.740
So I asked this question a little over two years ago and here is what I have found. I upgraded to 8 GB of RAM and was glad I did. When running Mac OSX Lion and Windows 7 (x64) in the Virtual Machine that I had about 1 GB of RAM left. I also went with a Core i7 processor instead of the Core 2 Duo. With this configuration everything runs pretty good including SQL Server, IIS, and Visual Studio in the VM. If I had it to do over I would go to 16 GB of RAM, that way I could dedicate more than 4 GB of RAM to the Virtual Machine. – webworm – 2012-06-15T20:12:02.957