Parallels + Windows 7 + OneNote = Running Slow

[solemajik]

Hi all. I have the 13inch 128GB MBA. I'm not too computer savvy so please forgive me.

I'm in graduate school so I have come to find OneNote a perfect tool for organizing my notes and lectures into one area. Works great for that - but, it seems my MBA is starting to slow down.

On a few occasions while browsing in OSX on Chrome I have gotten the message "Your startup disk is almost full" or something to that effect, while having Parallels in coherence mode. Admittedly, I had a ton of tabs open at that time but considering my MBA is relatively new and I don't have much else stored on it besides Parallels it seemed odd to me. So I am beginning to think my MBA is not able to handle the Windows 7 + OneNote with all of my lectures in it (1GB worth).

When I have Parallels in coherence mode OSX from time to time becomes very slow while browsing on Chrome. Several times I've actually had to restart the computer because it was so bad.

I am wondering if it is OneNote that is slowing down OSX. Obviously just having Parallels installed is taking up a significant portion of my harddrive, but considering I don't really use my MBA for anything else I figured it would be able to handle it.

Macintosh HD says I have 49.1 GB available out of a capacity of 120.47 GB.
Omnidisk says Parallels is taking up 30.9 GB and OneNote is currently taking up 1.1 GB. Common sense tells me it isn't the OneNote that is slowing it down but for some reason I feel like it is...

Any suggestions? Can I continue using OneNote without any problems?

 

[mzjin]

Hi all. I have the 13inch 128GB MBA. I'm not too computer savvy so please forgive me.

I'm in graduate school so I have come to find OneNote a perfect tool for organizing my notes and lectures into one area. Works great for that - but, it seems my MBA is starting to slow down.

On a few occasions while browsing in OSX on Chrome I have gotten the message "Your startup disk is almost full" or something to that effect, while having Parallels in coherence mode. Admittedly, I had a ton of tabs open at that time but considering my MBA is relatively new and I don't have much else stored on it besides Parallels it seemed odd to me. So I am beginning to think my MBA is not able to handle the Windows 7 + OneNote with all of my lectures in it (1GB worth).

When I have Parallels in coherence mode OSX from time to time becomes very slow while browsing on Chrome. Several times I've actually had to restart the computer because it was so bad.

I am wondering if it is OneNote that is slowing down OSX. Obviously just having Parallels installed is taking up a significant portion of my harddrive, but considering I don't really use my MBA for anything else I figured it would be able to handle it.

Macintosh HD says I have 49.1 GB available out of a capacity of 120.47 GB.
Omnidisk says Parallels is taking up 30.9 GB and OneNote is currently taking up 1.1 GB. Common sense tells me it isn't the OneNote that is slowing it down but for some reason I feel like it is...

Any suggestions? Can I continue using OneNote without any problems?

Not enough ram, you chose the wrong MacBook. To even think of running parallels on it. Grab a Pro.

 

[RedCroissant]

Not enough ram, you chose the wrong MacBook. To even think of running parallels on it. Grab a Pro.

I agree.

On another note, would you find it too much of a hassle to use bootcamp instead of running it in Parallels? You're going to lose just as much battery life, but then it also won't be as slow.

Do you have to use OneNote? I don't know if there is an application made for Mac that could do the same thing or not but if upgrading your hardware isn't an option, a software change might be in order.

 

[n1tut]

Not true. I have a basic 11" 2010 MBA with Parallels and no problems at all running side by side with Lion, and no difference in speed between either of them.

Plus mine is using 11.5gb as opposed to 30 so something seems amiss.

tut

 

[willgreene99]

I have the late 2010 11" 1.6Ghz C2D with Lion and Parallels 7. However, I run windows xp and after I allow it enough time to get cached up, it runs very well. Almost as fast as an application. However, there are times when it does get choppy and I attribute that to running too many programs on the mac side. This is when I assume it begins to page to disk. I agree that 4Gb of ram is a bit cramped to really run a vm but when you need to then it will have to suffice. I agree that OneNote is the killer app that I have come to depend on and although I have tried Evernote, OneNote is more robust and flexible.

 

[iLifer]

No problems here running similar on an i7 MBA. Check you've got your Win 7 VM hard disc set as an expanding hard disc in Parallel's hardware options:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/112045

 

[Redbull916]

I work for a software company in the UK so I use VmWare instead of paralells as VmWare is the industry standard (nearly three quarters of the servers I work on in the government, health and security markets are now virtualised using VmWare).

My virtualised Dell D830 runs much faster on my MacBook Air than the real thing. I did find a small degradation running a virtualised version of a 64bit i5 with 8gb of ram, but thats probably down to the Ram being reduced to 3GB.

I have been playing about with the settings and I find the best results are when I assign just over 2 GB of ram to a win 7 machine and 3gb to a windows 2008 server.

I also set the Virtual drives at 80GB but let them grow to size as vmware lets you compact the image to the size used, e.g.: if you remove a 1GB file from you windows machine, vmware will reduce your virtualised image by 1GB. Consequently they normally take up 25-35GB of my SSD.