Despite hardware limits, Parallels supports running Windows on MacBook Neo

"8GB unified memory is the minimum practical configuration."

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[hanharal]

Performance is not the problem. 8GB is simply not enough for running a virtualized environment and having anything significant going on in the host OS.

Single task stuff will work fine, but anything multi-threaded, memory hungry or heavy 3D graphics will quickly break down under load. And it’s not even 8GB with video RAM coming out of the same pool.

If you want to virtualize, get 16GB. Period.

Most people only care about the performance and energy use if run on battery power. This means it isn't a problem then.

I run Windows 11 for ARM in a VM which has 1 vCPU and 2Gb of RAM dedicated to it under Paralells. It's equal to running a Mac application using 2 Gb of RAM.

It works wonderfully and I run two old enterprise applications in there, one being an Ecplised based IDE which certainly do multi-threading and can be disk intensive. It's just that multi-threading and disk intensive software from 2013 isn't really hard for a computer do handle today.

 

[hanharal]

Thanks for adding this to the conversation; I’m going to give it a try on mine. With only a 256GB hard drive, did you need to install Windows on an external drive? I’m recently retired doing a little contract work on the side and this would be a cheaper solution than buying a second laptop.

My Windows 11 for ARM takes up about 37 Gb disk space and that's after about 4 years of usage, including upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and installing software and having data locally.

I've been running Windows VMs since 2010 on Macs and from 2001-2010 on Windows, so here are some advice on how to this with a machine with little memory.

• DO NOT give the Windows VM a lot of CPU and memory to begin with. VMs on Macs might perform worse by giving them a lot of resources on Macs with only 8 Gb of RAM
• Start with 1 CPU (against recommendation of Paralells) and 2 Gb of RAM
• Install Windows 11 for ARM
• Install the programs you need
• If it doesn't perform well, optimise Windows; see below
• Slowly increase either CPU or Memory until you get the performance you need
  • Choose Other so you can specify the RAM yourself and increase by 512Mb each time
• Do not use Coherence mode (may give high CPU/GPU usage)

How to optimise Windows 11:

• Start Task Manager
  • Under startup apps disable CoPilot, Teams, Widgets, Xbox (if you see them there and don't need them)
• System-> Advanced System Settings-> Performance
  • Adjust for best performance

A lot of recommendations on the Internet, will tell you to give the too much CPU and RAM. You have a Mac with 8Gb of RAM! Don't follow those recommendations.

Start with 1 CPU and 2 Gb of RAM and see how it goes.