MBA and .NET dev?

lokkers

lokkers

lokkers

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I'm toying with the idea of replacing my ageing Dell XPS (M1530) with a 13" MBA (128GB - about as far as my limited budget will stretch), because it's smaller, lighter and looks fantastic :p

However, I occasionally use my laptop for a bit of dev work (.NET, MSSQL) which is obviously an issue under OSX.

I'd therefore either run Windows under bootcamp (which I understand is dual-booting?), or virtualised under something like VMware.

Just wondering if anyone does the same, and whether it's a workable solution? I'd either run the VM from the SSD, or from an external disk.
 
Thats why I was planning to run Windows as a VM - I'd only need about 30GB I reckon, and I can move it to an external drive if necessary.
 
Up the RAM to 8GB and VM's should be pretty smooth.

I currently have Ubuntu, Win7, and Win8 DP on my MBP as VM's. A long with using Visual Studio on Win7 with no problems.
 
uniQ said:
Up the RAM to 8GB and VM's should be pretty smooth.

I currently have Ubuntu, Win7, and Win8 DP on my MBP as VM's. A long with using Visual Studio on Win7 with no problems.
Click to expand...

I'd like 8GB, but the MBA comes with a max of 4GB. I can't really justify the extra cost of a MBP
 
I forgot the MBA has the RAM soldered to the board. You should still be fine using a VM with 4GB though.
 
I got a MBA 13" i7 last week, and I'm using Visual Studio 2010 SP1, Windows 7, IIS, ReSharper 6 on Parallels 7.

Bear in mine I've not used it too much, but it works fine for me. The VM doesn't leave a lot of RAM for much else though.

I wouldn't run the VM from an external drive, IMO always run from the SSD.

I haven't got MSSQL installed, and I'd guess if you wanted to install it you'd be better off using bootcamp due to it's RAM requirements.

Also beware of installing 32-bit Windows on bootcamp, you'd be best to use 64-bit. 32-bit Win has only 2.16GB of usable RAM on the MBA.
 
Yeah vs2010 works fine in VM's, I was playing with xna4 and 2D games which ran fine under Fusion. With 4gb ram you'd only be able to give your VM about 2.5gb which is tight to run W7+VS+MSSQL. My current work PC is sat at 2.8gb with VS and SQL running but it also has other stuff running that I could disable.

Is the dev work for fun or for work? You can easily run ubuntu, eclipse and do mono development with that amount of memory ;)
 
Thanks for the feedback chaps.

As much as I'd love to spend the extra for the 256GB SSD, funds don't permit the extra outlay on something that I don't expect I'll use that much. I think I'll be fine running the VM on 2GB ram (I can always use SQLCE over SQL Express anyway), so it was more the disk space that might end up being a concern.

My home dev stuff is mainly just for fun, and to keep up to date with the technologies I don't get to use at work. I can always RDP into work or my desktop if I need to do anything serious :)
 
I run a VM for Win 7 for VS but I don't do anything "big"...128GB is good for me personally but it all depends on what you like. My personal files total around 20GB....everything else is external.
 
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