Looking to upgrade from my old white MacBook, I love this wee laptop as I have had it for years and never had a problem with it specially after I put an SSD in it.
The problem is I need to use apple configurator 2 to add some devices to my companies MDM and my old laptop can’t run it
I do very light graphics editing and video editing for work but I mostly am working in excel or on my windows machine for our accounting software (Quickbooks Pro 2019).
I am thinking of upgrading to the new MacBook Air with 512gm ssd and 16gb of RAM, would this be a good spec for the work I do.
Also the my current computer is not powerful enough to smoothly run a full virtualisation of windows, I am hoping when I upgrade I will be able to do that to run the one program that makes me still use a windows machine.
Does anyone have any recommendations for what I should go for or if the MacBook Air is a good solution what software is the best for virtualising windows 10 and running one single programme (Quickbooks Pro 2019)
I think the MacBook Air with the specs you listed would be a good choice for most of the workload you describe. The one thing that would give me a bit of pause is your mention of video editing. As long as it’s fairly light and not that frequent you can probably get by with the Air, but it may be worth shelling out the extra $400 to get a similarly configured MacBook Pro.
The one other thing you might want to consider is whether the two ports on the Air are sufficient for your needs.
was thinking that, we only make a few videos a year for our site, its all made on iMovie so not the highest production quality but its worked so far (just really slowly on my old machine)
I was thinking about going for the pro but I really like the thought of the Touch ID but don’t want to shell out for the touch bar pro
All the way with an MBA. My grandson runs Adobe Premier on his retina MacBook so I think even an entry-level MacBook Air will have zero difficulty handling iMovie.
As always with a Mac, max out to what you can comfortably afford then enjoy it for years and years.
If your only need for Windows is Quickbooks, you might want to try out CrossOver. It is much lighter weight that running a VM and you don’t need to buy a Windows license. They have a free trial that would allow you to test it out.
I use VMware Fusion and run Windows 10. Its Unity mode is pretty cool, essentially getting rid of the Windows backdrop and allowing Windows apps to look more like they are just a Mac app.
This video has a bit too much “camera” work, but may give you an idea what Unity is like.
my MacBook but if you don’t need the ultra portability then the new MBA sounds like the right choice. I run Parallels with Win10 and have used the desktop QB version no problems.
I did use it years ago to get Quicken working but have switched to Parallels for a long time now as my Windows needs are greater. Since it has a free trial I just thought it would be easy enough to test out in the cases where someone just needs a single Windows app to work.
Sorry, I haven’t used it in a long time. I didn’t hear some ad reads recently on podcasts claiming that it was much improved and worth trying out again. That’s what made me think of it. So if you haven’t tired it recently, then I’d give it a try again. If you have, that’s too bad. It seems like it would still have a market if they the vendor could provide decent support.
