On a newer Macbook Air, I can even game in a Windows 8 VM. They've come quite far, and with things like unity mode in VMWare Fusion (don't know what it's called

On a newer Macbook Air, I can even game in a Windows 8 VM. They've come quite far, and with things like unity mode in VMWare Fusion (don't know what it's called in Parallels) you get your VMs applications like they are somewhat native OS X applications. There isn't much of a speed penalty, and especially not in "simple" things like an IDE.