MacBook – Will the new 2015 “MacBook” be able to run VMs effectively? Windows especially

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I currently use a 2Ghz i7 x 8gb Memory 2013 MacAir. With this I am able to effectively run a windows 8 VM running Visual Studio Professional and other developement apps simultaneously, or Ubuntu and Eclipse with no issues. I get an occasional memory error in windows guest if I have too much open but this is rare.

My laptop is starting to get super beat up. I want to get the new MacBook but am concerned about the less the stellar specs on the CPU. Has anyone ran VM's on this box yet and confirmed that it is capable of such tasks, or are we dealing with a glorified chromebook here ?

Thanks

edit

Review all but saying that this rig will not run vm's smoothly

Best Answer

As far as I know, the new MacBooks as of today have only begun shipping from online orders, so I won't be able to speak from personal experience - but I would be very wary about the MacBook being able to handle intensive tasks like Parallels, especially in tandem with Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Parallels' recommended hardware specs for running Windows 7 include "...an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor (Core Solo and Core Duo processors are no longer supported)." The new MacBook has sufficient RAM (8 GB minimum) to fulfill their requirements, but the Core M processor (see the tech specs) will be the issue with running these types of tasks on the MacBook.

Check out the benchmark details here compared to the i7 that you are using currently and you'll see a noticeable difference - Core M running at 1.1GHz which effectively makes it a mobile processor if anything.

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