Hi All – there’s a good mix of IT bods on here so am hoping for a little guidance.
I’ve become Mac-curious and fancy scratching the itch. I couldnt justify the cost of a mac for just home use so am thinking I’ll use it for work too as we have a good BYOD policy.

I’m looking to limit my spend on this as I dont want it to be an expensive mistake so was going for a refurrb 13″ MBP as these are user serviceable and I can bump the RAM to 8GB for £30 and £150 would buy a decent SSD if I like it…

Anyhow; some questions please afficionados:

I use a 15″ for work – will I find the drop to 13″ noticeable or does the screen quality and trackpad offset that?
Could I use Apple TV to use my TV as a monitor (using the wireless KB and track pad) or is a HDMI adapter the better and cheaper option?
What is the best way to segregate work and play? VM’s?
Could I copy the image from my work issue laptop into a VM?
Is Office 2011 (mac) anygood?

Work use will be mail, powerpoint and excel and some stuff that only runs on windows so I will need a VM (or I could still use my old work laptop for those apps as I only need to run the reports monthly)
Personal use will be web, mail, music, recording (using reaper) and editing home video

I’m a windows fanboi at heart – is switching going to be painful – I want to keep the household running both MS and Apple stuff

Thanks 🙂

Can’t answer all your questions but…
I use a 15″ for work – will I find the drop to 13″ noticeable or does the screen quality and trackpad offset that?
I found it did (offset things) yes. I have a 15″ Lenovo and a 13″ Macbook

Could I use Apple TV to use my TV as a monitor (using the wireless KB and track pad) or is a HDMI adapter the better and cheaper option?
I believe so Apple TV works well in that way, yes.

What is the best way to segregate work and play? VM’s?
Yes, but some things work better than others. For example, my hacking tools didn’t make the transition to VM that well but windows works just fine. To be honest I rarely fire up any of the VM’s now. Most day to day office type activities work fine on the MAC, if I need to use some clever hacking tools I’ll ssh to another box.

Could I copy the image from my work issue laptop into a VM?
I very much doubt it but no actual experience of trying that.

Is Office 2011 (mac) anygood?
Looks alright, felt fine when I used it.

I went from a 17″ XP laptop to a 13″ MacBook Air 18 months ago

1) Stick as much RAM in as you can, especially if you’re running VMs, as both OSs will need RAM

2) I found the MBA much easier to use than my old windows laptop, and this is mainly the trackpad, but also the high quality screen. The main difference is that I rarely resort to a mouse with the MBA

3) You could use appleTV, but there is a slight lag as you’re pushing your screen over your network. HDMI adapter would be better for actually working, rather than displaying stuff

4) If you need to run a windows-based game / SW, VMs are the way to go if you want to be able to switch between things. If you want all the Mac’s resources in one hit for windows though, bootcamp is what you’ll need to do

5) Not sure about copying in the image into a VM – you’ll have to ask someone more tech-savvy than I!

6) I prefer Office 2011 on the Mac to 2010 on the PC

7) I’d use Mac versions of office where possible, and dip into the VM only for Win-only SW. There are plenty of equivalents to windows software for most things for your personal use

The mac trackpad makes it worth the switch on its own, IMO. Using the postage stamp on my work Dell (15″ quad core, SSD, ruggedized, 16GB RAM beast, so no slouch) makes me cry every day.

Dual boot into Windows and you’ll also have the nicest Windows laptop around.

13″ is fine, reasonably high res and good quality, nice and small and slips into a bag easily too.

Do it, you won’t regret it.

HDMI adapter would be better for actually working, rather than displaying stuff

Look on the Apple forums for issues with HDMI output from Airs and Pros.

We have three Airs at work – one works with HDMI, one gets by, the third one is dreadful. Apple won’t admit to the problem but wouldn’t guarantee (if I returned the brand new Air I had just bought) that the replacement would be any better.

Linky… https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2180106?start=165&tstart=0

Existing device into a VM works quite well with VMware workstation 8. However if it doesn’t work you’ll need to quite tech savvy to troubleshoot the process.

We have three Airs at work – one works with HDMI, one gets by, the third one is dreadful.

I must be lucky then

Perhaps, but looking at that thread I posted (one of many threads too) there are countless people with issues.

Ok, thx for the feedback.

What do you do about AV? I’d like to have some installed. Nod32 is excellent on the pc

AV would be a little redundant in my eyes as the risk of a virus is low. Linux innit.

I use Sophos, which is free for the Mac. Not sure it does anything at all for the Mac, but it does give a bit of added protection to the W7 VM as nothing can ‘hide’ Mac-side.