need your opinion

[gilbert1020]

I have a uMB 2.O ghz and 2GB of RAM, really basic computer.
Anyway, i have been thinking of using VMWARE Fusion on my Mac
to use specific windows programs, but I was wondering if i run vmware fusion
will it slow down my mac and will it run smoothly ?

 

[miles01110]

It will run fine, you might notice a little performance drop depending on what program you're using, but it shouldn't be that bad. If you wanted to speed things up all around you could upgrade the RAM to 4 gb.

 

[madog]

You can split the RAM differently to each OS, the minimum for either being 512 (I believe).

Yes, as Miles mentioned, it depends on what you'll be doing. You won't be able to run games (in Fusion, unless it's really old), but you'll be able to do some basic stuff in Windows. You will notice some slow down depending on your settings, but it's not completely awful considering the fact that you are running two OSes simultaneously.

 

[brop52]

More RAM the better with virtualization.

 

[scienide09]

+1 for more RAM.

I was running Fusion with Windows 7 RC1 for a while on my MB, but then switched it over to my MBP. The increased RAM in my MBP made for better overall performance while running both OS X and Windows.

 

[DataCabbitKSW]

Agreed. With what has been stated before, the more resources you have to throw at it, the better. More CPU more RAM (especially more RAM) will help ease any burden. Just running the VMware instance will eat a bit of CPU and a good chunk of RAM, however, the extra burden only really comes (like miles and madog said) from whatever programs you are running under the other OS.
That being said I do know that Windows 7 has some improvements to help ease with virtualization. If you want to try it out, you can download the Win7 RC for free to give it a try:
http://tinyurl.com/9agzvs
MS is giving out licenses and linking to the download bits to do an install. Since you are doing an install to VMware, you could just mount the .ISO file, or burn it to a DVD-R and load it from that. The free RC licenses work until June of 2010, but have a bit in them so they reboot every 2 hours starting March 2010. The official release is due out on October 22nd of this year.

I had Win7 loaded onto parallels (as opposed to VMWare Fusion) on a MBP and it ran pretty well. However the system had a pretty good chunk of RAM as I use it to do development.