The ASP.NET monkey's feelings about Parallels on an Intel Mac

Friday, August 11, 2006

I'm a little overwhelmed at the amount of e-mail I'm getting about how I like Parallels on my MacBook Pro, which is what I've been using for Visual Studio, SQL Server and Photoshop development. I guess I'm not going into enough detail with my other posts, but that's partly because there's no detail to give.

Keep in mind that the machine is already a 2 GHz Core Duo, so natively for Windows, it's pretty damn fast. I have 2 GB of memory, and I'm giving Parallels a gig. Usually in OS X I also have Adium, Firefox and sometimes iTunes or iPhoto open.

Ihave no performance issues to speak of, which is to say none that wouldn't already be present in Windows. I first ran Windows with Boot Camp (that was the motivation to buy the MacBook Pro at all), so I have a good frame of reference to compare to. Parallels says there is some performance hit, but whatever that is, I'm not seeing it. All of the development tools play nice and work just peachy. So peachy, in fact, that I'm pretty sure I want to buy a Mac Pro now to replace my aging desktop. Perhaps later in the year.

I have to say that this has been my experience as well. Parellels on the Mac Book Pro is great! If you purchased while it was in beta you could get as low as 39.99.

My next desktop will most likely be a Mac Pro too.

David Findley - Saturday, August 12, 2006 12:47:55 AM

I am holding out for the Core Duo 2 release, and then need to try and find the money from somewhere - because what else is a student loan for - rent or a MacBook Pro :) I think we all know the answer...

Ben Hall - Saturday, August 12, 2006 4:39:24 AM

Agreed Ben!

Damon Stephenson - Monday, August 14, 2006 6:02:38 AM

My current desktop now is IMac intel Core Duo. Im also regularly coding .NET 2.0/VS 2005 & Sql Server 2k5 on this box which is ran on windows XP (boot camp). So far no issue and its work fine.

ron - Monday, August 14, 2006 9:19:32 AM

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