Is Powerbook Pro fast enough for Parallels?

[ari]

Should I be able to have the following open on a Macbook Pro 2.16 with 2GB of ram and run without delays/problems?

MAC OS
- Photoshop
- Acrobat Pro
- Parallels

WINDOWS XP OS
- Excel and, sometimes Word and/or Powerpoint
- Outlook
- Explorer
- Terminal services


This is what I have and while I don't always have everything running, sometimes I do. Things aren't so good. It is slow, and crashes. I've been working like this for several months but am going to change. I may get a PC for all my office stuff but that means 2 laptops, argh, or leaving my office work in the office, also a bit of a poor solution.

 

[pcraddock]

Should I be able to have the following open on a Macbook Pro 2.16 with 2GB of ram and run without delays/problems?

MAC OS
- Photoshop
- Acrobat Pro
- Parallels

WINDOWS XP OS
- Excel and, sometimes Word and/or Powerpoint
- Outlook
- Explorer
- Terminal services


This is what I have and while I don't always have everything running, sometimes I do. Things aren't so good. It is slow, and crashes. I've been working like this for several months but am going to change. I may get a PC for all my office stuff but that means 2 laptops, argh, or leaving my office work in the office, also a bit of a poor solution.

A Macbook Pro should be more than adequate for the listed applications. If you are on a Powerbook (as you have listed in the title of this question) you will not be able to run Parallels at all. It needs the Intel processor and not the old G4. Hope this helps!

 

[dd55]

FWIW I have almost exactly the same configuration and it all works flawlessly. The only problem I had was that video playback was "choppy" under expee. Bumping the RAM allocation to 1 gig took care of that and everything seems very smooth on both sides.

DD

 

[Hugh Watkins]

my set up just now just keeps on trucking

this is from inside my VM - with a danish sytem

=========================
Navn på operativsystem Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 build 2600
Navn på producent Microsoft Corporation
Systemnavn **************************
Systemproducent Ikke tilgængelig
Systemmodel Ikke tilgængelig
Systemtype X86-based PC

Processor x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8 GenuineIntel ~16224 Mhz
BIOS-version/dato UNKNOWN, 07/03/2007
Windows-mappe C:\WINDOWS
System-mappe C:\WINDOWS\system32
Startenhed \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Landestandard Storbritannien
Abstraktionslag for hardware Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
Brugernavn **************\Ejer
Tidszone Greenwich, normaltid

Fysisk hukommelse i alt 511.55 MB out of 2gb on MacBook Pto
Tilgængelig fysisk hukommelse 114.70 MB
Virtuel hukommelse i alt 2.00 GB
Tilgængelig virtuel hukommelse 1.96 GB
Plads til sidefil 1.22 GB page file
Sidefil C:\pagefile.sys

==============================
IRQ 9 PCITool
IRQ 9 Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB2 Udvidet værtscontroller - 265C
IRQ 9 Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM AC'97-lydkort

Hukommelsesadresse 0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI-bus
Hukommelsesadresse 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Parallels Video Driver

snipped
=====================
IRQ 1 PC/AT udvidet PS/2-tastatur (101/102 taster) OK
IRQ 6 Standarddiskettecontroller OK
IRQ 9 PCITool OK
IRQ 9 Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB2 Udvidet værtscontroller - 265C OK
IRQ 9 Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM AC'97-lydkort OK
IRQ 10 Parallels Network Adapter OK
IRQ 11 Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB-universel værtscontroller - 2658 OK
IRQ 12 Parallels Mouse Synchronization Tool OK
IRQ 14 Primær IDE-kanal OK

=========================

0xC0000000-0xC0FFFFFF Parallels Video Driver OK
0xC1000000-0xC10003FF Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM USB2 Udvidet værtscontroller - 265C OK
0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI-bus OK
0xA0000-0xBFFFF Parallels Video Driver OK
0xCA000-0xDFFFF PCI-bus OK
0x20000000-0xFFFFFFFF PCI-bus OK

=================
HD

Drev A:
Beskrivelse 3,5"-diskettedrev

Drev C:
Beskrivelse Lokal harddisk
Komprimeret Nej
Filsystem NTFS
Størrelse 31.24 GB (33,542,656,000 byte)
Ledig plads 22.78 GB (24,457,232,384 byte)<<<<< all modern machines need lots of space for scratch files

Enhedsnavn
Enhedens serienummer A45******

Drev D:
Beskrivelse Cd-rom

=================

the only time it ran slowly was when I gave it 1 gb memory out of 2 gb RAM

Hugh W

 

[dru_]

All of this is fine, though for your user satisfaction, I'd recommend moving to Mac native alternatives as you can. For example, I wouldn't generally recommend using Office under windows unless you are married to Exchange. That's alot of overhead when you have a Mac version of Office that really is only missing robust Exchange MAPI functions, in POP3/SMTP/IMAP it's good, if not great.

For Terminal Services, you have MS's own Remote Desktop Client for the Mac, and it's alright for single sessions, you also have the option of using rdesktop under X11.

I personally use Parallels for Delphi & VS.Net in addition to some app testing. In my view, the less I run in Windows, the better

 

[wgdixon]

Should work fine...especially considering Parallels will likely only work half the time anyway, thus NOT consuming system resources