I noticed when running parallels on my MBP the battery drained very quickly. Especially while wathing media vie IE or Firefox in the virtual environment (the CPUs were running at 70% while watching video). Anyone else notice this? Should the CPU be so taxed watching video via parallels? It's largely academic for me, but can imagine situations people would need to rely on the battery and want to use parallels.
All video emulation is being done by the CPUs, since it can't virtualize the GPU. As has been document in other threads and on other sites, their algorithms can certainly be more efficient. But fundamentally, battery life will be worse when running parallels and especially worse when doing graphic intensive things like watching video. It's the nature of the beast.
that explains the difference between CPU usage comparing watching media via osX and virtualized environment, thanks for your succinct explanation!
