Upgrade From 2014 15" MBP i7 2.5ghz 16GB or Not?

I am an IT consultant. Five years ago, I was at a company that allowed me to use my own Mac for my work instead of the company supplied windows laptop. I was easily able to run a Windows 7 VM for Windows specific required applications using my Mid 2014 MBP I7 2.5ghz 16GB Ram. The past two years, I’ve been in a work situation where I was required to use a company provided Windows laptop. Now, I am changing jobs and can go back to using my own Mac if I would like to.

I will be running a windows VM using Parallels again, but this time it will be Windows 10. My primary development activity is database programming, so I can do most of that on the MacOS. My concern is how does this my current MBP compare to the newer ones, and should I bite the bullet and just buy a new MBP. For most of my activities, my existing MBP will do fine, its just the Windows VM that I am concerned about.

As an aside, my company will not provide any funding for a BYOD computer or software, so I am on my own from a funding perspective. However, after having to go back to using Windows the last two years, I am ok with that.

Let me know your thoughts and Thanks!

The specs really haven’t changed that much since 2014. Maybe 2.8GHz, vs. 2.4GHz.
I would say:

  • Try it as-is ($0)
  • If Parallels doesn’t seem peppy enough, try boot camp (even from external SSD) ($0)
  • Make a decision based on your new data :slight_smile:

honestly, The 2014 should do just fine with everything you want to do. I still use my mid-2012 unibody for that.

If it doesn’t work out, then you can shell out the $2500 for a new MBP 15 inch.

I regularly run a Win10 VM (VirtualBox) for MS project, Visio, and Access and it does just fine, although Windows is a resource-hogging piece of crap.

The 2018+ models now have a 6-core processor, so they are a fair bit faster, but I doubt it’s necessary.

Can you run Mojave comfortably?
If yes: don’t upgrade
If no: wait 30 days to think about it, then upgrade

I have a mid 2014 MBP and it runs Windows 10 in Parallels just fine.

That’s good to know. I figured I would be ok, just wanted to see other’s opinions.

Thanks.