Potential for running Windows 10 on 2019 MacBook Air?

[sayhitokyle]

Hi,

I know there are myriad threads on here about the benefits / drawbacks of different methods of running Windows 10 on a Mac but very few of them relate to the newest models so I’m hoping someone can help.

I’m considering purchasing a new MacBook Air to update from my incredibly old Mac Mini, however as a teacher I need access to a specific piece of Windows software for exam marking (e-marker). For now I just use Bootcamp with a reasonable partition of the 1TB HDD. My question is, with me now downgrading to potentially 128gb (or 256 if I can afford it) onboard storage, is there a way to run Windows without sacrificing a huge chunk of my SSD? Ideally I’d love to use a USB stick rather than external drive for portability.

Has anyone tried this on the new macs yet? Any advice would be really helpful!

 

[Loge]

I would use a VM in that scenario, rather than bootcamp. With parallels for example, you can assign a maximum size to the VM, but the file on your disk will only be as large as required to store the OS plus its data.

 

[FontGeek]

I would use a VM in that scenario, rather than bootcamp. With parallels for example, you can assign a maximum size to the VM, but the file on your disk will only be as large as required to store the OS plus its data.

I'd also recommend Parallels. I use it on my 128 GB MacBook Pro's HD, and it works like a charm. I've used it running off external drives/sticks as well, and though it still is smooth, it does take longer to start up and open applications. The Windows 10 OS + a couple extra apps is about 30 GB, but it has a tendency to grow a couple gigabytes a week (because of snapshots that Parallels takes). Every week or so I reclaim that extra disk space from the Configure menu, and the OS size goes back down.