Okay so its been well over a year now since my Lenovo died. Heck it might have been 2 years...i cant keep track anymore. I was at a job and needed a computer fast so my boss got me a new maxed out 15" retina laptop. A month later the current model was released so i have the next to most recent version. I wish i could have waited that extra month.

Anyhow. We loaded my OS and software with a thumb drive and vmware. Thats right 1 click and windows and all software are installed from my bosses "clean install" back up.

Almost immediately i noticed how much slower it was than my 5 year old lenovo. Currently when i have multiple tabs open with firefox i can click between them and count to 3 before the graphics change to the next page. It's so slow i cant stand it anymore.

I really want to ditch vmware and install with bootcamp but i wonder if that will even help. Has anyone noticed a performance improvement with boot camp over vmware? Windows 7 is my OS btw.

get a windows machine! ;)

ABSOLUTELY! Parallels killed my macbook air. Bootcamp is a godsend in my opinion. I either have a Macbook or a PC. Best windows laptop i've ever had.

To be honest though, it should work fine with Parallels if you have 8gb of RAM. I assume you have set vmware to only use about half of your RAM and just a few of your cores? Switching between Macbook and Windows takes about 30 seconds or so.

Windows 7 is going to run slower under VMWare, Parallels, or Bootcamp.

They add another layer of processing, and you have practically halved the processor power available to Windows by splitting it between Win7 and OSX. Of course, it may be even worse... make sure you have split the cores between Win7 and OSX, and split RAM as well.

With an i7 and lots of RAM, you may be ok... but with a weaker processor, and less RAM, it will be painful.

I've never understood why people think OSX or Macs are worth the trouble. Before the 2-1's or Ultrabook's, I could possibly have understood, but the newest 2-1 designs and Ultrabooks beat Apple's hardware, and I'm really familiar with what's inside a Mac. Couple that with no compelling software that runs only on Mac, and the fact that for what you're doing you need to run Windows... and it just makes me shake my head and think, "Why?" What's the answer? What's so much better under OSX, that you feel compelled to buy the Mac?

Well if they named me after a computer, I would feel obligated to own one as well. :)

I also have a Mac with Win7 and VMware, one of the worst computers I have ever used. The powers that be swear this is the future. I feel like I have stepped back to the world of Windows ME.

How much Ram and what type of hard drive.
You need at least 8GB RAM with SSD drive to get snappy performance in a VM system.
Parallels is generally faster than VMware on OSX, so you might want to swap VM's hosts too.

I got a brand new Mac book pro about 3 weeks ago.

I have windows7 pro running bootcamp.

It works just fine. No issues.

I just retired my 5 yr old Mac book that I also ran windows on bootcamp.

Again best windows machine I ever owned

Boot Camp will definitely be faster, but I didn't like it. The touchpad never worked nearly as well under Boot Camp as it did in OSX (and VM of Win7). I deleted my Boot Camp partition altogether and just use Parallels.

Mine is a 3+ year old Macbook Pro with 8GB of RAM and other than the OEM 5400RPM hard drive being the slowest thing I have ever dealt with, I still love it. (and an SSD would fix that)

If you don't have an SSD drive that should be your first upgrade, assuming you're max'd out on RAM. I run mine with 8 gigs and a 500 gig SSD drive. When I changed my drive I chose not to reinstall VMWare, merely because I didn't feel like taking the time to configure it properly again. It's definitely faster. I also use Firefox and Windows 7 on this MacBook pro; its considerably faster than the new desktop PC we got that is running the same software. The Macs never crash; OSX or Windows. The PC? It's always something !

I agree... Mac, what are the specs on the MBP that you have? Then what are the settings for the VMWare?

For example, I have a 2012 Mac Mini with 16GB of ram and 480GB SSD. For my VMware, I am using 1GB of ram and 10GB the "hard drive". Oh and another part that is important... I have it set to use 4 processor cores, a little over kill for what I do. But it may help you use the 4 cores.

KOT

Like everyone else stated, you are probably running out of memory since you're essentially running 2 operating systems at once. I have a 2 year old MBP (the most basic model they had available then) running Win 7 Pro with Bootcamp and it has been flawless. I haven't booted into OS for nearly 2 years. I just have it defaulted to boot into Windows automatically.

OT: might not be related - My baby sister updated her iMac OSX to Yosemite OSX last weekend, the machine ran almost as a brick after was updated.

Find and delete Cache and Cookies folders will help to speed up your MAC.

Well crap. I'm in need of an upgrade and really thinking MBP maxed out. But also feel like a new one will be out before too long??

I personally still haven't seen any PC machines that compare in build quality and in overall feel. The mac trackpad and multi touch is so smooth. I've yet to see a PC machine that feels as natural.

Looking at the Top Alienware PC's they still don't feel as nice to work on as the Mac's. 

Love to get my hand on new MacPro, but definitely will get Lenovo Thinkpad T-440s on the next toy. Having using T series the last 14 yrs, can't stand without the "eraser head".