vmware fusion performance Windows 7 VS XP

[MyAppleWorld]

Hello

I am tempted to purchase 2nd hand 13.3" MacBook Pro 2.26GHz, 2gb ram, 160gb hdd.

I have a need to run windows as a virtual machine for some occasional .NET development (which I am studying)

I have a couple of questions

What is the impact of battery life running a VM? I intended to run it in Unity mode and only have open .net tools such as visual web developer.

Also, does anybody know the performance of windows 7 in the new Fusion version? (What's aero like?)

Would the performance of an XP vm be better?

Appreciate your responses

thanks

 

[dmn8]

Assuming you will be running Snow Leopard here are my thoughts.

1. You have to be at Fusion 3.0, the prior version was very unreliable for me - poor performance.

2. I have 2 virtual machines, xp and win 7, win 7 seems to run better - I use it for the same reasons - development projects - visual studio.

3. Regarding battery - when you have a vm running it will significantly cut into your battery life.

 

[Zedsdead185]

I am tempted to purchase 2nd hand 13.3" MacBook Pro 2.26GHz, 2gb ram, 160gb hdd.

Sorry, But a little confused as there is no such model as the one you state there. It could either be a 15.4" macbook pro, or a 13" Macbook.
Either you made a typing mistake, or the seller is telling you porkies. Just thought i'd point it out in case it was the latter

EDIT: oh, forget it, silly me, i didn't realise they were the specs for the recently released (or should i say name changed) 13" macbook pro. Quite poor specs to be honest. It sounded like the specs of a much older machine. Just ignore me...

 

[Cliff3]

Hello
I have a couple of questions

What is the impact of battery life running a VM? I intended to run it in Unity mode and only have open .net tools such as visual web developer.

Also, does anybody know the performance of windows 7 in the new Fusion version? (What's aero like?)

Would the performance of an XP vm be better?

To the first question, you can configure power saving modes in Windows 7 that will cause VMWare to suspend the VM when Win7 sleeps. That should, in turn, allow OS X's power saving modes to come into play. I don't like repeatedly going into and out of a suspended state, so I turned off the Win7 power saving mode.

Win7 ran acceptably in VMWare version 2, but version 3 adds explicit support for the new OS and seems to be an improvement.

XP needs less memory than Win7. My XP Pro VM is configured for 512MB memory while the Win7 VM (Ultimate x64) seems happiest configured with 2GB.

My primary VMWare environment is an 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro with 12GB of memory and effectively unlimited system resources. I am in the process of retiring an older pre-Santa Rosa C2D Macbook Pro maxed out at 3GB of system memory in favor of a 2.53Ghz 15" MBP. VMWare is bound by that 3GB memory limitation and a 2GB VM is too large to run on that machine. VM's of that size ran acceptably on a 4GB black Santa Rosa Macbook that I no longer have.