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Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

macrumors.com

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Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#21
post #3

Not surprising but good to hear. It seems that there really isn’t anything that runs on a new MackBook Air that you couldn’t run on a NEO. It might not be as fast for some things but it gets the job done.

Isn’t basically m1 air equivalent in specs? I’ve got that one and I’m yet to feel limited.

It will have a longer support period than an M1 based on Apple’s history of device releases. This might also mean a longer support period for the 16-series phones than typical, similar to the 4S.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#23
post #13

Funnily it probably runs Windows better than the typical corporate spyware burdened x86 laptop.

Took 6 minutes from power button to login prompt this morning. Probably even longer from login responsive desktop. So yes, probably!

I’ve helped someone with a rather clean iMac, circa 2019, still supported by Apple. Forget 6 minutes — you can spend a full hour from boot to giving up trying to get anything done.

I think that Apple has gotten so used to having fast storage in their machines that the newer OSes basically don’t work on spinning rust.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#24

Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine. I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the contro…

>but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the controller to extend lifespan. But when your entire wearable storage is a single soldered chip, I'm not very optimistic about long term reliability.

I thought wear leveling worked at the page/block level, not the chip level? On an SSD, if there was a failure of an entire chip, you're still screwed.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#25

Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine. I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the contro…

Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles. Let's say 64GB is used for swap. That's 19200 TB or 19.2 PETABYTES of Swap usage. Let's say you swap 12GB a day, you will burn out that 64GB of Flash Storage in 4.38 years and my guess is that amount of swap usage is extremely high that user would probably replace laptop sooner out of performance frustration.

that doesn't maths

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#26
post #3

Not surprising but good to hear. It seems that there really isn’t anything that runs on a new MackBook Air that you couldn’t run on a NEO. It might not be as fast for some things but it gets the job done.

Isn’t basically m1 air equivalent in specs? I’ve got that one and I’m yet to feel limited.

Always excited to hear about fellow M1 users. I’m not limited in the slightest. 5-6 years strong now?

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#28

Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine. I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the contro…

Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles. Let's say 64GB is used for swap. That's 19200 TB or 19.2 PETABYTES of Swap usage. Let's say you swap 12GB a day, you will burn out that 64GB of Flash Storage in 4.38 years and my guess is that amount of swap usage is extremely high that user would probably replace laptop sooner out of performance frustration.

12GB a day isn't very much. If your working set is larger than the 8GB RAM, you're swapping multiple times per second. It doesn't take very many megabytes per swap to reach 12GB if you're doing that multiple times per second.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#29

Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine. I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the contro…

Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles. Let's say 64GB is used for swap. That's 19200 TB or 19.2 PETABYTES of Swap usage. Let's say you swap 12GB a day, you will burn out that 64GB of Flash Storage in 4.38 years and my guess is that amount of swap usage is extremely high that user would probably replace laptop sooner out of performance frustration.

>Most flash has average wear out after 300k cycles

No it doesn't. Most 1TB drives are rated for around 600 TBW, so enough to overwrite the drive 600 times, nowhere near 300k cycles. If you search for specs of NAND chips used in SSDs, you'll find they're rated for cycles on the order of hundreds to thousands, still nowhere near "300k".

https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/crucial-mx500-4-tb.d95...

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#30
post #8

Man, I do wonder what the realistic lifespan of that single NAND chip will be after it gets hammered by constant swapping of running tasks way beyond the capabilities of a 8GB RAM machine. I have a PC with a 10+ year old 256GB SATA Samsung SSD that's still in top shape, but that's different because that drive has those 256GB split over several NAND chips inside, so wear is spread out and shuffled around by the contro…

There was quite a bit of discussion about that when the M1 first came out, but none of it really seemed to have happened six years later. The target audience isn't in danger of wearing it out and the ones that will push the limits will grow tired of it and sell it in a year or two or move on to the Neo 2, which might have 12gb of ram due to the expected chip. I still think it's a great machine, but I think all these…

>There was quite a bit of discussion about that when the M1 first came out, but none of it really seemed to have happened six years later.

1. How do you know nothing happened? Define nothing in this case. Do Mac users check and report their SSD wear anywhere?

2. Didn't the OG 256gb M1 have 2 128MB NAND chips instead of one 256 meaning better wear resistance?

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