I'm looking to buy either a new laptop or a new computer in order to run ArcGIS for university work. I was initially tempted to get a computer but I am tempted to go for a macbook for portability. I know the current macbooks can run ArcGIS using Parallels to run Windows but I am looking for users on here who have run this or a similar program on a macbook for their advice.
Macbook Pro for ArcGIS?
- Thread starter JamesA95
- Start date
Personally I find it actually quite desirable to run windows in parallers / vmware fusion and have ones professional productivity apps under it.
This allows you to easily backup your whole virtual working environment and even move it from a mac to another. You also separate your work from your personal internet browsing etc. which is good for security. Same is of course possible with Windows laptops as well.
For CPU dependant applications the drawbacks in performance are negligible and thanks to SSD's in modern Macbook pro's, disk performance is stellar regardless.
Real drawbacks are imo following:
-Battery life suffers when you have the virtual machine running (Like from 8 hours of web browsing to 6 hours or so (admittedly I don't have experience if this is the same with newest Broadwell rMBP's)
-Added cost of Windows & hypervisor licensing
-GPU compatibility & performance, though this varies from application to application. I have no experience with GPU accelerated 3D modeling or video applications under virtualization.
Benefits include
-Added security and easy backups of your work environment (ie. you stick a usb stick to your mac, it gets mounted in OSX instead of being mounted in your work Windows etc.)
-snapshots (ie. take a snapshot of your work environment, run windows updates / software updates without worrying, test for a day or two with easy way of going back if something doesn't work
-transferable working environment, just export and import your work-windows VM if you want to change your physical computer and you don't want to reinstall change anything.
-if you upgrade from dualcore 13" retina macbook pro to octa-core mac pro workstation with 64GB of RAM at some later point, you can move your virtual machine and increase the HW resources available to it with just few mouse clicks instead of reinstalling your operating systems and whole machine.
But like I said, all of these benefits are available also with Windows based desktop virtualizations. Mac + VM is good if you want to have OSX for something (personal use?) or prefer the HW / aluminum casing of Macs or something like that.
This allows you to easily backup your whole virtual working environment and even move it from a mac to another. You also separate your work from your personal internet browsing etc. which is good for security. Same is of course possible with Windows laptops as well.
For CPU dependant applications the drawbacks in performance are negligible and thanks to SSD's in modern Macbook pro's, disk performance is stellar regardless.
Real drawbacks are imo following:
-Battery life suffers when you have the virtual machine running (Like from 8 hours of web browsing to 6 hours or so (admittedly I don't have experience if this is the same with newest Broadwell rMBP's)
-Added cost of Windows & hypervisor licensing
-GPU compatibility & performance, though this varies from application to application. I have no experience with GPU accelerated 3D modeling or video applications under virtualization.
Benefits include
-Added security and easy backups of your work environment (ie. you stick a usb stick to your mac, it gets mounted in OSX instead of being mounted in your work Windows etc.)
-snapshots (ie. take a snapshot of your work environment, run windows updates / software updates without worrying, test for a day or two with easy way of going back if something doesn't work
-transferable working environment, just export and import your work-windows VM if you want to change your physical computer and you don't want to reinstall change anything.
-if you upgrade from dualcore 13" retina macbook pro to octa-core mac pro workstation with 64GB of RAM at some later point, you can move your virtual machine and increase the HW resources available to it with just few mouse clicks instead of reinstalling your operating systems and whole machine.
But like I said, all of these benefits are available also with Windows based desktop virtualizations. Mac + VM is good if you want to have OSX for something (personal use?) or prefer the HW / aluminum casing of Macs or something like that.
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ARC isn't generally a particularly intensive set of programs (ARC scene may be and if you're using HUGE tiffs then you may have an issue if you have a slow data disk, also if you're using some toolbox functions on very large datasets). If you can get it running then it's not going to have problems performance wise.
What you will want though is a big screen and a mouse... Otherwise it's a pain in the ****
What you will want though is a big screen and a mouse... Otherwise it's a pain in the ****
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What?
Desktop OS virtualisation on Parallels is utterly stunning. I use it for everything (and Fusion for server side stuff). It's performance is ace, and not far off running it natively. It's a hell of a lot more convenient though - just the ability to snapshot/rollback is invaluable.