Thanks. I should have said that my main requirement is to be able to open and work on many existing projects which were created on the XP system - otherwise I would happily go the mac route. Slow performance is what I mean by poor graphics, interestingly not on the Corel but on MS Powerpoint with moving graphics taken from the Corel. But I didn't explore the possibility of allocating more ram - I presume that is somewhere on the parallels tools?
Parallels Tools is what is installed on the Guest OS to support running the OS in a virtual machine. It doesn't handle the "hardware" settings for the VM, but plays more of a supporting role. Typically the settings for the VM are handled by the Parallels application before booting the VM. I don't have the specific process for you, since I don't use Parallels, but their documentation should show the steps. Typically you'd open the program without booting the VM, go into the settings for the Windows XP VM and change them as appropriate. I'll have to defer to their website/support forums for the specific process, as it could be unintuitive if Parallels is set to auto-start the VM.
I have 4GB available which ought to be plenty.
Yes, it should be - but keep in mind that if you want both your host and guest OSes to run smoothly simultaneously, you have to respect how much memory OS X wants to run comfortably (and it can be a bit of a memory hog). When I first upgraded to a Core i7 machine, I found that OS X was unusable if I allocated a full 2GB to my Windows 7 VM (I had 4GB at the time). I ended up upgrading to 8GB and now I can comfortably run both with 2GB allocated to the VM.
Perhaps I should use powerpoint for mac - if it will open my existing ppt files. I can try the trial version (Office for Mac) but my internet connection is not much more than dial-up speed so it can take many hours to download the 900 MB! I am also just a little wary of spending money on software when I am not sure it will give me what I want.
It should be available in retail form as well. Check your local computer stores and/or an Apple Store, if one is accessible.
I am not committed to parallels - I just tried the trial version which in all other respects was excellent. Why might VMWare be better?
In my experience, Parallels can be more than a bit flakey. They tend to be more aggressive with their new releases and therefore, usually have some bugs here and there. VMWare is the preeminent player in virtualization (they pretty much created the category) - and it's used everywhere from Enterprise-scale server implementations to desktops running just about all major OS platforms. Overall, I just find it to be more robust, although I haven't tried it since version 3.
What a pity that the XP drivers aren't available! I would have thought there were many other people in my position.....
Well, keep in mind that XP just celebrated its 10-year birthday. That makes it a real dinosaur in industry terms. The only reason it's still around is that it took Microsoft so long to follow-up with a new version, and when they did, it pretty much sucked. Windows 7 addressed most of Windows Vista's flaws, so the industry is now moving to it in droves. It's now closing in on Windows XP's market share and it won't be long before Microsoft drops support for XP entirely, which will make it a security risk to run when connected to the Internet.
