experience with Desktop through Apple M1 chip + Parallels?

[whulsbergen]

Anyone here with experience using PBI Desktop on the new Macbook M1-chip and Parallels Desktop?

My macbook pro 2015 is getting too slow for Power BI. Waiting 20 seconds for starting a new measure and sometimes minutes for a table to refresh is costing too much time.

Since Parallels Desktop is not yet officially supporting the M1-chip, I am curious if there has been any experience in the field.

[thomas-loewe]

Hi,

I am thinking about switching from my windows laptop to a macbook with m1. How satisfied are you with the performance of power bi and parallels? Do you also work with dax studio or alm toolkit, if so do all the features work?

regards

Thomas

[whulsbergen]

The m1 performance is outstanding, make sure you have 16 GB memory.
Last year however, Parallels didn't perform well. M1 support was coming out of beta, I needed a special Windows version with lots of advanced settings to get it working. And then it just kept crashing or showing black screens.
In the end, I switched to Amazon. That worked well, but is quite pricey.

But we are talking summer 2021, maybe Parallels sorted things out and is working fine now.

[whulsbergen · Accepted solution]

In the end I just went for the M1 chip macbook (16 GB).

Installing windows proved quite easy thanks to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWs_q9NBBKM&lc=UgxPyW2Ykd3WV3KhS494AaABAg.9M4EQNtZUY_9M4bex1qsHx 

It works just like before, only much faster.

The thing thats is still VERY slow is refreshing folders and files from Sharepoint. Can take minutes! But at least now the measures are not too laggy so I can work again!

[v-alq-msft]

Hi, @whulsbergen 

Please make sure that your machine meets the minimum requirements to run Power BI Desktop. The following list provides the minimum requirements to run Power BI Desktop:

• Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2, or later
• .NET 4.6.2
• Internet Explorer 10 or later
• Memory (RAM): At least 1 GB available, 1.5 GB or more recommended.
• Display: At least 1440x900 or 1600x900 (16:9) required. Lower resolutions such as 1024x768 or 1280x800 aren't supported, as certain controls (such as closing the startup screen) display beyond those resolutions.
• Windows display settings: If you set your display settings to change the size of text, apps, and other items to more than 100%, you may not be able to see certain dialogs that you must interact with to continue using Power BI Desktop. If you encounter this issue, check your display settings in Windows by going to Settings > System > Display, and use the slider to return display settings to 100%.
• CPU: 1 gigahertz (GHz) 64-bit (x64) processor recommended.

For further information, you may refer to the document 

Best Regards

Allan

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[amitchandak]

@whulsbergen , first check of some of these settings can help

https://www.thebiccountant.com/speedperformance-aspects/

[whulsbergen]

Thanks for the link, I'll run them. Most of the delay comes from importing data from several Sharepoint-folders, and a better machine problably won't fix that. But every tip is welcome, I'll look into them.