This may be a moot point as I am thinking about switching to vmware fusion 2, but ever since I upgraded to the latest versions of Parallels 3 w/Windows XP, I noticed that Parallels runs a little slow and occasionally it will hang when I choose the application to startup. I normally have to force quit Parallels and restart it to get it working. I am not sure if anything could be conflicting with Parallels... I recently purchased the latest Macupdate software and installed all the apps. So unless one of those apps (Little snitch and/or virus barrier) is causing the problem, I am out of ideas.