12-14-2007, 11:41 PM

heyy..
i've got parallels installed on my MBP. however the reason why i'm not using it is because i read somewhere that it divides everything between windows and mac! i've got two questions actually?:

1. when i divide the ram to both windows and mac (via parallels), say for example 2gb of ram to each OS. does that mean that my mac would be running 2gb ram all the time ? or as normal 4gb ram unless i open parallels and then it's divided into 2gb each?

2. can i run windows on parallels using my bootcamp partition?

any suggestion would be appreciated!

12-15-2007, 12:32 AM

Answer for your #1: If your MBP has 4 GB RAM, it is all available to your Mac. if you open Parallels, all that memory is still allocated to your Mac. If you start Windows with Parallels, it reallocates 2 GB of your Mac's RAM to the Windows machine, leaving your Mac running on 2 GB (you should be able to change memory allocation settings; say, allocate 1 GB to your Windows machine, retaining 3 GB for your Mac, or vice versa).

Answer for your #2: I don't know, but Fusion allows you to do that, so I'd imagine Parallels does too? How about asking Parallels Help?

12-15-2007, 01:03 AM

The answer to your second question would be yes. Install Windows via Boot Camp and when running the Parallels wizard, point it to your Boot Camp partition and you're set.

12-15-2007, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Neo

Answer for your #1: If your MBP has 4 GB RAM, it is all available to your Mac. if you open Parallels, all that memory is still allocated to your Mac. If you start Windows with Parallels, it reallocates 2 GB of your Mac's RAM to the Windows machine, leaving your Mac running on 2 GB (you should be able to change memory allocation settings; say, allocate 1 GB to your Windows machine, retaining 3 GB for your Mac, or vice versa).

Answer for your #2: I don't know, but Fusion allows you to do that, so I'd imagine Parallels does too? How about asking Parallels Help?

great, so installing windows via parallels won't affect my mac performance at all as long as i'm not running windows at the time! however even if it reallocated 2gb to windows and 2gb to the mac while running windows it's not a problem since i will only be using one OS at a time!
what do you say ?

12-15-2007, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by mahmoodali

great, so installing windows via parallels won't affect my mac performance at all as long as i'm not running windows at the time! however even if it reallocated 2gb to windows and 2gb to the mac while running windows it's not a problem since i will only be using one OS at a time!
what do you say ?

You're not using one OS at a time when you're running Windows via Parallels. OS X is acting as the host, and Windows is running in a virtual machine. This gives you the flexibility that is the hallmark of Parallels (and Fusion).

If you only need to run one OS at a time, just use Boot Camp.

Just out of curiosity, what programs are you running that you're so concerned will need more than 2GB of RAM at any given time?

12-15-2007, 11:53 AM

I'm an architecture student, all my work is done on autocad and 3ds max! which requires so much ram!

12-15-2007, 02:02 PM

i actually googled vmware fusion and i think it's better!
any idea how to uninstall parallels form my mac? i read somewhere that i should just open my applications folder and drag parallels into my trash! is that right or there's a better way ?

12-15-2007, 02:41 PM

You can either pull it out of applications or use the uninstaller on the cd if it has an uninstaller.

Or you can also try http://appzapper.com/

12-15-2007, 04:25 PM

Originally Posted by mahmoodali

i actually googled vmware fusion and i think it's better!
any idea how to uninstall parallels form my mac? i read somewhere that i should just open my applications folder and drag parallels into my trash! is that right or there's a better way ?

How so? Parallels and Fusion essentially do the same thing, except that Parallels is a more mature product.

12-15-2007, 10:13 PM

i found this page, compares between both vmware and parallels!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...allels_Desktop

12-18-2007, 06:31 AM

how much memory is recommended to allocate to a win xp or vista partition using parallels? I will have my macbook on xmas and will at least have 3gb/4gb of memory installed as well. can you reallocate memory on the fly? sorry for the dumb question...i will be a new switcher to mac....

Thanks!

12-18-2007, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by jayr41

how much memory is recommended to allocate to a win xp or vista partition using parallels? I will have my macbook on xmas and will at least have 3gb/4gb of memory installed as well. can you reallocate memory on the fly? sorry for the dumb question...i will be a new switcher to mac....

Thanks!

XP is usually comfortable with 512MB - 1GB if you're running a lot of "heavy-duty" apps.

Vista needs to have a minimum of 1GB, 2GB if you need to run "heavy duty" apps.

You can reallocate memory as needed, but you'll need to shut down the virtual machine.

12-18-2007, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by Neo

Answer for your #1: If your MBP has 4 GB RAM, it is all available to your Mac. if you open Parallels, all that memory is still allocated to your Mac. If you start Windows with Parallels, it reallocates 2 GB of your Mac's RAM to the Windows machine, leaving your Mac running on 2 GB (you should be able to change memory allocation settings; say, allocate 1 GB to your Windows machine, retaining 3 GB for your Mac, or vice versa).

It's a little smarter than that actually now. If you allow the Virtual Machine (VM) to say have 1gb of RAM. When you start Windows, you'll see that Parallels will not take that immediately. Assuming you're running XP (and not Vista) it will probably boot up using 130mb or so. It then just takes what it needs as you launch applications until it reaches the VM RAM limit, then it will page.

At this point, your Mac will only be able to use the remaining memory for it's own applications - however if the VM only needs 200MB, then OS X can still use the rest.

Parallels 3.0 really made a lot of improvements to memory management. In fact, if you don't care about gaming, I'd recommend Parallels a lot - certainly over VM Fusion, which gets betrter reviews because of DX9 support and better Linux drivers.

12-19-2007, 01:07 AM

thanks cwa!