Running Vista in WMWare on MBA?

[nph]

Is it doable?

I am not talking games here but rather just Office applications, Java etc for work? however I have run Vista on 1.83 first gen MBP and it really makes the fans go wild so considering the heat issues I have read about with Air it makes me nervous.

Has anyone run vista on their MBA using WMWare?

Would you recommend I go for regular MB or last gen MBP instead to be able to handle Vista?

Thanks

 

[ShALLaX]

I wouldn't bother with virtualisation at all on the Air. You'll need more RAM than the Air has for Vista. The CPU won't really be up to it either.

 

[smar]

Sorry to disagree...

Actually I ran the Parallels trial on the original MBA (with 64Gb SSD), and it ran very well.

I used it to run Outlook 2007 with Exchange Server (2Gb mailbox, along with a 15Gb archive PST file), AutoCad 2008 and Acrobat 9 Pro.

Outlook worked very well, responsive, and though occasionally marginally slower than when running on my Vaio (2.53Ghz with 4Gb RAM running Vista), it wasn't that much slower and certainly very useable. I also used the search functionality/indexing etc, all of which worked ok.

AutoCAD was a bit more finicky - takes a bit of time (relatively!) to start, but once you're in it was ok for doing the sort of thing I do (which is basically reviewing drawings/making measurements etc and certainly not intensive by any means).

I suspect that the SSD drive helped significantly with the user experience.

Hope that helps.

PS I haven't tried it yet on the new MBA, but will do so over the weekend.

 

[foodcoma]

PS I haven't tried it yet on the new MBA, but will do so over the weekend.

Please do share your experiences running parallels on the new MBA. Am keen to see how that works out

 

[ksmith80209]

Please do share your experiences running parallels on the new MBA. Am keen to see how that works out

I'm running Fusion with Win XP on my 1.8/SSD Rev.B Air and it works fine. I'm using the standard Office 2007 stuff plus MiniTab 14 for statistical analysis of large datasets. The Air handles both tasks with ease - as well as my MBP from what I can tell.

 

[foodcoma]

I'm running Fusion with Win XP on my 1.8/SSD Rev.B Air and it works fine. I'm using the standard Office 2007 stuff plus MiniTab 14 for statistical analysis of large datasets. The Air handles both tasks with ease - as well as my MBP from what I can tell.

I take it that you don't have any issues with the laptop slowing down when you're running Fusion? Also, this might be a stupid question but are the keyboard shortcuts for Office / XP (using Fusion) the same as if I were running Office / XP on a PC? Thanks

 

[ksmith80209]

I take it that you don't have any issues with the laptop slowing down when you're running Fusion? Also, this might be a stupid question but are the keyboard shortcuts for Office / XP (using Fusion) the same as if I were running Office / XP on a PC? Thanks

No slowing issues that I have noticed. I haven't run any tests, but aside from the MBA overall feeling slightly slower (than the 2.6GHz MBP), Fusion runs really well. Enough so that I'm leaving the MBP home and using the Air on my next business trip!

Don't recall if the shortcuts are the same. This would be a function of the VM and Fusion, not the hardware (AFAIK) so I don't see why they'd change.

 

[tigres]

People own Vista? Thought that was recalled...