Parallels Desktop and Visual Studio
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
You should look at the Lenovo ThinkPad ThinkPad X1 Carbon | Ultralight Business Ultrabook With Windows 10 | Lenovo US[^]
Caveat Emptor. "Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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Um, not to state the obvious, but what the heck. If you're doing Visual Studio development, why didn't you buy a nice Windows laptop?
Latest Article - Code Review - What You Can Learn From a Single Line of Code Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
Chris - I feel your pain. About 10 years ago, I used bootcamp to run win WinXP/MSSQL/VS and switched to Parallels and later to Fusion on a 2006 MBP. Not much in the difference. More recently, I've been using a Macbook Air and VirtualBox (Win7 Pro with VS2015 and SQL Server) wihtout any real degredation in performance. The VM is on a thunderbolt connected external HD. Are you able to install Parallels on your old MBAir and check how it works? Or try VirtualBox - it's free and you can import a VM. I was thinking about upgrading to a new MBP, but your comments are making me nervous!
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
Chris Maunder wrote:
The screen brightness constantly osculates
I hate it when my screen starts acting as a spongy vent too. :)
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
I remember my wifes iPhone slowing down with the latest ios. I can't help wondering if it's related.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
Chris Maunder wrote:
My conclusions is: No, parallels will not let you run Visual Studio in a usable manner.
That was my conclusion about 2 years ago - so I gave my Macbook air away to me niece who is studying an arts degree. I simply could not get it to work acceptably and my time is too valuable to waste any more on it.
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
As others have mentioned, you may want to consider going with standard Windows laptop for your Microsoft stack development, etc, and use the Mac for other stuff. I think you are only going to become more frustrated trying to make MS and Apple work together, especially with mission critical tools/apps.
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dandy72 wrote:
I'm not sure what it all means...
Eschew all OSes!!! Batman: Quick, Robin, to the Browser!! :laugh:
raddevus wrote:
Eschew all OSes!!!
I'm envisioning Visual Studio implemented in Javascript, running on a Chromebook™. Where's the mind bleach...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Um, not to state the obvious, but what the heck. If you're doing Visual Studio development, why didn't you buy a nice Windows laptop?
Latest Article - Code Review - What You Can Learn From a Single Line of Code Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
I have to second/third this. I have a co-worker who is retired and likes putzing with technology. So, he recently went full Mac because his wife loves her Mac, and they are traveling a lot, and he did not want to bring 2 computers... He is NOT doing development. But we require windows to use our software, which he is testing, etc. I dare say NOTHING works easily for this chap. GoToMeeting acts up, loses his mic. Bootcamp (I guess) crashed, he had to rebuild something. He ends up joining meetings directly from his phone because of issues. I guess the ONE good thing: His wife was happy she could check her WEB MAIL, via the Mac. LMAO. I don't have time for these issues. It is not that hard to give my wife one laptop, and me keep mine. Done. Oh, that's what I did. Never looked back. == Someone mentioned Apple slowing down iPhones... Well MSFT windows 7 update a WHILE back (18 months), started Parking my Laptops CPUs. My wonderful Dual Processor, Quad Cores, with 32GB of memory was running like crap. I was ready to upgrade. I am talking 5-10x slow down. Found a CpuCoreParking tool that let me unpark the cores... (And see the parked cores). This was NOT an accident, and reeks of the same thing Apple got caught doing! =
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raddevus wrote:
Eschew all OSes!!!
I'm envisioning Visual Studio implemented in Javascript, running on a Chromebook™. Where's the mind bleach...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
raddevus wrote:
Eschew all OSes!!!
I'm envisioning Visual Studio implemented in Javascript, running on a Chromebook™. Where's the mind bleach...
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
I have been working with a Macbook Pro & Parallels desktop since 2011 (16 Mb) without to many problems with Visual Studio. Definitely not the issues you mention. I am using the same configuration on a Mac Pro now. I have had some issues with the allocation of memory but the technical support of Parallels has been helpful in solving these problems either by email or remote session. Best of luck, Aad Brugman
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
I used a MacBook Pro about four years ago after my Windows computer died. I installed Parallels and then a Windows 7 Pro instance inside Parallels, and VS, SQL Server, misc tools inside Windows 7. No problems at all. Ran great. In fact, it was better and faster than my Windows machine (which was Alienware), which I thought was really weird since the Windows 7 via Parallels shared resources with the Mac OS. Both machines had 8GB RAM, but the Mac had a great SSD where the Windows machine had a 7200 RPM hard disk. I have not had to use Parallels recently.
Mike
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
As an alternate approach, try Visual Studio for Mac which I believe was released over the summer. No need to use Parallels unless of course you are trying to use other windows related tools.
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I bought a Macbook Pro to replace my beloved Macbook Air. I loved that Air, but it was getting a little long in the tooth. I had huge expectations that the Pro would be bigger, badder, faster, and just plain better. It's not. It's absolute crap if you want to use Bootcamp / win10. It's USB C only, meaning connecting it to an external display only works reliably if you reboot before you plug in. The trackpad constantly thinks left click is right click. The screen brightness constantly osculates as it tries to auto-adjust and I get about 3-4hrs max on battery when using Visual Studio. I use *exactly* the same setup on the Air and had insane battery life and no problems whatsoever with displays or the trackpad. So I disable auto-brightness, I bring a mouse with me if I can, plus a charger. Plus all the dongles, of course. And I shut down everything when I need to switch displays (ie each time I switch from home office to Office office). It does, however, work brilliantly when in macOS. You get the lovely double-click pressure on the trackpad, USB-C hot swaps nicely. Font sizes just work on HiDPI screens. So I decided maybe I should just stay in macOS and use Parallels. All the marketing material says Parallels works fast. It's super easy to install. You can even use VS, ISS and SQL on a low-end laptop with 2 cores and barely enough RAM to remember its own name. I dutifully downloaded Parallels. Within minutes I had my Bootcamp partition running in a window. A really, really tiny window. Making that window full screen gives you a big black window with a tiny Windows window in the middle. Must be a driver issue. Maybe that explains why I have no network, either. I install the Parallel tools and reboot. Tiny window still there. Still no network connectivity. I try every option I can find. I try every network option. Every display option. I google and bing and duckduck and disable the folder sharing and tweak this and that and basically do all the simple, obvious things that the interwebz says you must to with Parallels. Still not really functioning properly. I go into coherence mode (Parallels, not me. I was not coherent at this point) so at least I can run and view apps. My goal was to see how Visual Studio would behave. I had a stopwatch ready and had a coffee. I was assuming I'd need razor sharp reflexes to spot the change in app performance given what I'd read. I fire up Visual Studio. I load up our solution. And wait. And wait. And it loads. I open some files...slowly. And ... try ... a
I used a 2011 MacBook Pro with BootCamp and didn't really have any issues. I then upgraded to a 2013 MacBook Pro and used VMware Fusion to run Windows 7 and Visual Studio (then Windows 10 and VS). I will say that the move to HiDPI/Retina caused some issues, but I was able to get them resolved through different settings adjustments. However, over the course of several macOS releases, things change and it became too much of a hassle to keep things working well. I recently switched to the new Microsoft Surface Book 2 (used Surface Pro 3/4 some too) and have to say that it is hands-down the best laptop I have ever used. If you primarily develop software using Visual Studio, I'd recommend getting the Surface Book 2 (or even an upper-end Surface Laptop or Surface Pro). Keep the MacBook Air in order to compile Xamarin Forms apps for Mac or iOS. Return the MacBook Pro if you can. Not worth the hassle when such good hardware is available. Hope that helps... Kelly.
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Um, not to state the obvious, but what the heck. If you're doing Visual Studio development, why didn't you buy a nice Windows laptop?
Latest Article - Code Review - What You Can Learn From a Single Line of Code Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
Find me a laptop as nice as the Macbooks. (and I'm actually serious here) I've looked at the Dell XPS - the webcam placement is just dumb and it feels plastic-y. The Zenbook is a contender but battery life is pretty awful and the dark blue with gold trim? I just can't do it. Surface book? Crazy expensive and that rubbish hinge makes it too thick. Surface Laptop? No USB-C which means it won't work with my LG monitor. And then there's the whole issue of chargers: I find Microsoft's odd brick-and-side-plug clumsy and heavy. Compare Microsoft[^] to Apple[^]. Seems a small thing but when travelling it makes a big difference having a compact brick with just a single thin USB-C cable that can be detached. Every week - every single week - I trawl through the latest laptops to see if there's one that will replace my current unit but still nothing. The Macbook Air was (in my opinion) the pinnacle. The battery life, the keyboard, the performance. The Macbook Pro has a nicer chassis and screen, but the keyboard is horrid and the bootcamp drivers haven't kept up with the hardware. So yeah I'm fussy, but dammit: if I'm going to spend that much then I'm going to get something I love working on.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Chris - I feel your pain. About 10 years ago, I used bootcamp to run win WinXP/MSSQL/VS and switched to Parallels and later to Fusion on a 2006 MBP. Not much in the difference. More recently, I've been using a Macbook Air and VirtualBox (Win7 Pro with VS2015 and SQL Server) wihtout any real degredation in performance. The VM is on a thunderbolt connected external HD. Are you able to install Parallels on your old MBAir and check how it works? Or try VirtualBox - it's free and you can import a VM. I was thinking about upgrading to a new MBP, but your comments are making me nervous!
Parallels on the old MB Air was pretty much the same. I was planning on trying VM Fusion today but that's been scuttled due to some server issues I need to deal with.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
The screen brightness constantly osculates
I hate it when my screen starts acting as a spongy vent too. :)
I have no idea how I managed to spell it that way. That's imaginative even for my creative spelling efforts.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I have been working with a Macbook Pro & Parallels desktop since 2011 (16 Mb) without to many problems with Visual Studio. Definitely not the issues you mention. I am using the same configuration on a Mac Pro now. I have had some issues with the allocation of memory but the technical support of Parallels has been helpful in solving these problems either by email or remote session. Best of luck, Aad Brugman
So there we go: it's possible! The thing that's bothering me is: what's the difference in setups between you and I? I had parallels import my Bootcamp partition. Did you start from scratch or import bootcamp? With Visual Studio are you working on big projects or small? What about services such as SQL Server or IIS?
cheers Chris Maunder
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I used a MacBook Pro about four years ago after my Windows computer died. I installed Parallels and then a Windows 7 Pro instance inside Parallels, and VS, SQL Server, misc tools inside Windows 7. No problems at all. Ran great. In fact, it was better and faster than my Windows machine (which was Alienware), which I thought was really weird since the Windows 7 via Parallels shared resources with the Mac OS. Both machines had 8GB RAM, but the Mac had a great SSD where the Windows machine had a 7200 RPM hard disk. I have not had to use Parallels recently.
Mike
The SSD is one of the reasons I originally switched to the Macbook. Performance is outstanding.
cheers Chris Maunder
