I was just wondering how much system overhead I might expect after installing Parallels and Vista on my MacPro 2.66GH w/ 2G RAM? Is Vista up and rumming all the time OSX is running or is it only running when Parallels is invoked? Just got the Enterprise version of Vista today along with Office 2007... will it run well in the current release? Thanks.
I run windows 98 se, and xp pro on the same computer that you have. Interestingly (i have menu meters enabled) when running 98 the virtualization causes one of my processors to be pegged @ about 95%-100% all the time. xp pro on the other hand I never see this and all the processor float between 10% and 20%. Believe it or not you wont feel a drain (or slowdown) because quite frankly the MP is REALLY good at multitasking. I'm not really sure why the above actually occurs or if xp (home edition) would behave similarly to 98 since it works on only one processor (xp pro works on multi processors). I assume Vista is similar to xp's under pinnings so one would get similar cpu results. But if your concerned that the your system will slow down - let me put those fears to rest - it wont with vista running in the background.
I guess the answer is "it depends." on my 2GB Macbook with my WinXP VM set to 512MB, things really bog down if I open more than a couple of OS X apps like Lotus Notes (a disgusting stinky oinker of a memory hog), Safari, iTunes, MS Remote Desktop, and that's about it. Parallels uses a ton of virtual memory and seems to allocate more real memory than you think judging by how badly the system bogs down. so I guess for me, realistically, it's Parallels + maybe 1-2 other apps. too bad about the 2GB memory limit on the Macbook... oh and no vista will not be runnning in the background all the time. only when it is started up w/Parallels.
