MacBook Pro Performance

Every so often you'll read comments from Windows fanboys that Macs are good only for Facebook or graphic artists. Well, this is what I had running on my late-2013 13" Retina display MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD) as of a little while ago:

• Safari web browser with multiple tabs.
• Thunderbird for 2 personal email accounts.
• MS Outlook for work email and calendar.
• MS Lync for work IM.
• Slack for work IM/file sharing.
• Textwrangler text editor for a scratchpad.
• Evernote for note taking.
• OS X Terminal.app running SSH tunnel to a Linux server.
• OS X Terminal.app for ping and traceroute to troubleshoot connection to a vSphere server.
• ZOC for SSH connections to multiple Linux servers.
• MS Remote Desktop Client with connections to 2 VMware vCenter servers.
• MS Excel with two spreadsheets open for looking up server IPs.
• MS Word to review a quote I got on some electrical work in my data center.

And...

• Windows 7 Professional running in Parallels Desktop, so I could run Internet Explorer and the HP .NET iLO remote console for a VMware vSphere server that is acting up.

I have the application windows spread out across multiple virtual desktops on my 27" Apple Thunderbolt display. It's perfectly stable and responsive.

Parallels 2.5 Build 3214 Under Leopard

This morning I decided I'd better verify that Parallels was still working, post-upgrade.  Good thing, too, because it wasn't.

When I clicked on the Parallels Desktop icon in my Dock, I got an error message indicating that it could not connect to one of its drivers, and should reinstall.

Build 3214 was still in my ~/downloads folder, so I reinstalled it which fixed the problem.  I verified I could open my XP virtual machines, and also that I was able to tether my Blackberry 8703e to the MacBook Pro for use as an EVDO modem, using Sprint's Windows-only connection manager software.

I still need to see if I'll be able to use my Keyspan USB-to-RS232 adapter in XP running in Parallels, which I have so that I can program my ham radios.

Another Use For Parallels

Earlier this week we got a potential issue with our gateways escalated to us. A customer running a Microsoft Windows server as a VPN terminator was experiencing problems with established tunnels getting disconnected.

Unfortunately, I was out of the office when it got sent to us, so I don't yet have sufficient information to properly troubleshoot it. I'm hoping to get further details soon, but in the interim I setup Windows 2003 in a Parallels virtual machine this morning. If the customer gets back to us I can use W2K3 running on my MacBook Pro as my test box.

It's a lot more cost effective creating virtual test boxes than having to keep real servers around for testing. Not to mention, no additional space is required.