I wan't to buy a mac book air 11" version, but i don't know wether my structural designing softwares like ETABS, SAFE STAAD pro, Auto CAD, Revit will work on it or not..
can anyone help me with this...and if i install MS windows on it will the battery life be affected...?
MacBook Air, Windows 7
Thank you all for your reply... here are the system requirements for the softwares that i need to work on, as i wan't macbook air for portability (and offcourse i like it), so i don't wan't to connect it to the monitor. Also, can you please tell me that how much decrease in battery life will be there if i install windows on it.
ETABS System Requirements | Latest release: ETABS 9.7.4 |
ETABS will work on any Windows-based (network installations require Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7), IBM-compatible personal computer with at least the following configuration:
| |
SAFE System Requirements
Processor:
Operating System:
Memory:
Disk Space:
Video Card:
STAAD V8i
Technical requirements
Software: (None)
Processor: Intel® Pentium®-based or AMD Athlon™-based PC or workstation
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows XP, Windows® 2000
Memory: 128 MB RAM
Disk Space: 200 MB minimum free disk space
I don't think MW will affect your battery usage. As for the software you want to use research their individual System Requirements and make that judgement for yourself. Already I noticed that AutoCad preferrs a higher screen resolution and more RAM than the 11" offers but "could" run with the lower system resources.
Whether running Windows via a VM, or natively via Bootcamp, you can expect far battery run time than with OS X performing the same tasks. Power management is much more efficient with the specific Mac hardware hardware than is Windows with the available drivers that Bootcamp provides. It's probably one of the principal reasons why users who are only going to run Windows, may not want to chose a Mac notebook to do it.
As was noted, you have to look at the individual specifications for the applicaitons in question. I would add that as the Air is not really able to be expanded I'd be nervous if the machine just barely fits in under the RAM system requirements, since that suggests even the next version might have system requirements beyond what you'd have, requiring a new system.
Video is going to be "limited" in resolution on the 11" Air's built in display. You could solve that with an external monitor, but then that kind of defeats the purpose of the Air if it needs to be hooked to an external monitor to use software you have to be able to run. Now if you only needed to run that software infrequently and/or always in an office setting where the monitor would be located that's different, since the Air will support relatively high resolution video on the external video display.
From what I see you should be able to run your preferred softwares. Really, the biggest drawback would be the desktop realestate. The 11" MBA can sport an i7 processor and 4GB RAM.
thanks for your valuable advice....
Mac book air
