Parallels Desktop: Should I leave it running when not in use?

[outtoplay]

So I have a brand new iMac 27" 3.1 i5, it's mighty nice. I created a bootcamp partition with Win 7 and installed Parallells Desktop 6... all went well.

I won't actually be using the Win7 software all that often. not every day, or maybe a hour or two here and there during the work week or if gaming.

My question is do folks leave Parallels running? I heard that you can suspend it when rebooting the mac, (safer/smarter) than just stopping the virtual machine. But does PD eat a fair amount of resources if left running?

It's handy to have it there, and by the end of this week I will have upgraded the memory on my imac to 12 gig, so I have resources. But should I kill it when not in use to free up system resources?

thanks,
Brendan G.

 

[miles01110]

It doesn't really matter.

 

[outtoplay]

It doesn't really matter.

Thanks for the reply, but I would imagine that running a 2nd OS has some consequences on the PRimary OS's performance. No?

 

[miles01110]

Thanks for the reply, but I would imagine that running a 2nd OS has some consequences on the PRimary OS's performance. No?

Obviously it will consume some resources on the machine, but you could experiment for yourself whether or not it's noticeable.