Personally, when I am on the road, I am much happier carrying only a single laptop.

Now, if your workflow is such that some says you are at your desk working in Windows, and some days you are at your desk working in Mac, then two separate machines may be the best solution.

VM software makes it easy to switch back and forth between the two platforms for workflows that involve both Windows and Mac applications.

VM software may cost less than a separate second machine.

A single Mac based backup strategy can backup both platforms.

If you are on the road, A single laptop weighs less than two laptops.

It's trivial to share files between the two platforms when they are hosted on the same platform.

There are conveniences to having them all on one machine, rather than split across two machines. It's a reasonable question to ask, and there are reasonable answers.Ĭonsider someone who needs to run a mix of Mac and Windows applications.

With Windows PCs available for next to nothing, both new and refurb, with Windows pre-installed (you know Windows is not included with either emulator, right?), please, someone provide me with justification for not just buying a cheap PC to run your QuickBooks Pro, or some other application not available on MacOS? Sure you can do it, but in the words of my late mother, 'JP, just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.' Mom was wise. Codeweavers built a translation layer that lets you use x86/64 apps on macOS, as well as M1 chips.ĭefinitely look up stuff online such as YouTube videos to verify your applications work on parallels/crossover before investing in such a big purchase, especially since you’re a college student.It mystifies me as to why anyone would want to run Windows on a Mac, silicon or otherwise. You could also consider using the new Crossover 21 by codeweavers if PowerBI or any other software you’re going to use doesn’t work on ARM Windows 10/11. U could try another virtual machine (forgot the name) that can boot up x86/64 windows but it is so slow that I wouldn’t even consider that route. Parallels Desktop for Mac is software providing hardware virtualization for Macintosh computers with Intel processors, and since version 16.5 also for Apple.

Parallels can only boot up the ARM version of windows and not the x86/64 one.

Get the 16gb and allocate atleast 8gb to windows.įurthermore, make sure Power BI and whatever other software you are using is compatible with the ARM version of windows 10/11. Pretty much all college campuses have WiFi throughout, so iCloud shouldn’t be a problem if you go that route.Īnd also, just imagine running windows with 4gb ram, let alone virtually. U can always get a external SSD or more iCloud space. The 16gb is more of a need while the 512gb SSD is less of a need if that makes sense. Simple answer - get the 16gb one, and if you have the money and need it, get 512gb SSD.

Macbook air parallel desktop