osx - Mac hardware specs for running Visual Studio in Parallels

I'm moving over to a .NET project and am going to be working with Visual Studio 2013. I'm a Mac user and going to be working mostly front end. My current setup is an early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" with the following specs:

• CPU: 2,2GHz Intel Core i7
• Memory: 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
• Gfx: AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
• Hard drive: 160GB Solid state SATA drive

I would like to continue to run OS X with Visual Studio running in Parallels. I have not tested Visual Studio on my current setup, but I suspect it would run sluggishly. Does anyone have any experience with this, and can you point me in the direction of some recommended hardware specs? My project leader has asked for specs, so that we can either upgrade my current setup or get a new machine.

Any experiences would be appreciated :)

Obviously, get a fully loaded current MacBook Pro if that's an option.

If not, upgrade the RAM in your system to 16GB, which you can do pretty cheaply. Additionally, you're likely going to need a larger HD.

I'd also install the Windows as a Bootcamp partition and then add it as a Parallels VW, so you have the option of running in straight Windows for large compiles and such.

Good luck, MB

Windows and Parallels runs fine on pretty much any machine with sufficient RAM (4GB upwards). I've worked on (smaller) projects on a white 2006 MacBook and I found it to be absolutely usable so minimum requirements really are not an issue. It's just about how patient you are and how much you can benefit from faster building-times etc. As with native system what brings you the biggest boost will be Flash Memory instead of a HardDiskDrive in most cases. Also, think about how much RAM you want to use for your virtual machine and add at least 2GB to be reserved for OS X.