03-26-2010, 11:06 AM

I had XP sp3 installed via Bootcamp and everything was fine but I found having to close down Windows and restart OS X whenever I needed to be there and vice versa, a pain in the ...... . So when macupdate included Parallels 5 in an offer for $49.99 it was too good to miss. And yes, it's a good way to have XP on your MAC. I have 4gb of Ram and have had no device issues at all....BUT.... oh boy doesn't it suck power out of your battery.

03-26-2010, 11:34 AM

I use VirtualBox on my iMac so battery life isn't an issue for me..but is this something specific to Parallels or XP??

Regards

03-26-2010, 02:08 PM

That's news to me.... Why would running Parallels 5 or any other virtual software have an adverse impact on battery life?

Regards.

03-26-2010, 04:11 PM

It works like a charm for me and never had battery issues, are you running a lot of processor/memory hogging applications in Windows via Parallel?

03-27-2010, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by sau124

It works like a charm for me and never had battery issues, are you running a lot of processor/memory hogging applications in Windows via Parallel?

No, I don't think so. I have just been using the OS and Nokia's Ovi programme as my old phone won't talk to MAC OS. And nothing too strenuous going on under Snow Leopard. The bottom of the MBP also gets very warm when I'm running windows under Parallels 5 - which is, of course, why the battery gets used up. But why is this happening?

(By the way, thanks for your interest)

Don't get me wrong - it works fine it is just the battery/power consumption issue that's tasking my brain.

03-31-2010, 11:53 AM

I think I now have the answer to my question. Why does my battery run down so fast when using Windows in Parallels?
Today, I popped into an Apple Store and one of the guys there said that probably the reason is that I am effectively supplying two computers from one battery - two lots of OS's and two lots of hard disk. That's why when I start Windows I hear the already running HD make the startup growl I get when I start up Mac OS and why the bottom gets hot due to the processors running two OS's.

Any other observations?

03-31-2010, 02:17 PM

Whoever told you that is piling it on.... Even though you're running Windows on top of OS X, you're still only using one operating system and one computer. The Windows "hard drive", "CPU", and all other Windows hardware is virtual and is actually one large file being run under OS X.

Go back to the Apple store and ask them to try again....

Regards.

03-31-2010, 02:35 PM

Agreed - that was a line of BS. Apple geniuses are not particularly supportive (in my personal experiences) of issues arising from using other operating systems on the Mac, even though it's one of the great selling points of the OS. They typically make things sound worse than they really are.

Cheers

03-31-2010, 05:26 PM

Thanks guys. I can see what you're saying but surely two OS's, because you are running Snow Leopard and Windows together, must consume more power. After all, you can't get something from nothing. So if you ask a processor to work with two systems......or am I missing something?

04-01-2010, 02:03 AM

Yes, I think you are missing something... You're not running two operating systems, you're only running one. You're running OS X and Windows virtually. Remember, Parallels 5 is a Mac OS X program, so in effect you're running it and a large file which contains your virtual Windows.

Regards.

04-01-2010, 09:39 AM

You are quite right. And I have found this link Battery Optimization? - Parallels Forums
which explains it for me. In a nutshell "When you run Parallels Desktop, additional CPU load occurs, thus battery is serving less time" (a parallels team member).

Cheers