I wouldn’t actually argue with the reboot scenario either. A lot of these tips are dependent upon workflow. I myself tend to find my VM usage goes in blocks. I’m either working entirely in the VM for a while, or not, so the speed bump in automatic allocation doesn’t bother me—and I’m almost inclined to go for the reboot method as well since, as Wock points out, it only takes a few seconds to switch. If I did go that route, I would probably tune the VM as Jaysen suggests, with a more level playing field for both operating systems, since if I did need to access the BootCamp partition, it would be for something quick like checking an output in Word.
Just to add a little market-speak to the equation, the latest Parallels is supposed to be fully 64-bit, which means (in theory*), a faster VM.
- In theory, Theory and Practice are identical, but in practice Theory and Practice can vary wildly.
It is 64bit, but the only advantage is for a 64bit VM. If you are running a 32bit VM it won’t be any better.
There are other factors like more mem available to a VM, but how many folks actually want to give more than 2GB to the VM?
Also you have to have one of the newer 64bit procs to use it.
For me, anyway, the biggest things I did to speed up the guest OS was settings within the guest OS itself. Switch off Aero (Basic 7 is fine if you don’t want to go “full classic”), and all the fancy animation effects. Just those two settings made it feel much, much more responsive.
That will speed up any system. Eye-candy is fattening to your OS. Loose the weight to speedup. The other big “speed-up” is no AV. Certainly not for the normal user, but turning off AV makes a huge difference by not passing every read thru the engine. A better solution is using a properly designed AV that only reads new files though the engine on write. Too bad those only exist in the labs for now. BAH!
Anyway if you are like me and you so small slices (1 minute Mac, one minute Winblows, one minute Solaris, 30 sec Linux) then there are host OS improvements that can be made. As you say, 90% of OS optimization, no matter if it is a VM or real host, is in the OS itself.
Why complicate things? 
Here is a solution to your scenario that calls for no reboot.
microsoft.com/mac/default.mspx
As to Vm 64 Bit, 64VM is fine but you still will be emulating a 32 bit OS (Apple only supports 64bit windows on Pro macs)unless you are running a machine that Apple supports running 64bit or you do some geeky workarounds that are unsupported.
Now if you are on a beast of a machine and have lots of ram (8gb+) I can see emulation looking more appealing but in a working environment if I was doing that much in two OSes I would consider running two dedicated machines for optimum performance.
PS: Laptops imo, are not “beasts” but rather lightweight CPUs for convenience. VM on a laptop is to me a “convience” but still suffers performance hits due to the large amount of limited resources being used.
An MPB (current model) is more robust than most non-mac desktops. I would agree with you on a MB though.
How do I download the beta version of Scrivener for windows?
Is there anyone who can tell me how to download the beta version of Scrivener for windows?
Thanks
There’ll be a link on the site. It’s still in the works. It should be out by late tomorrow (UK time).
Actually, any minute now, not tomorrow. Final pieces are in play.
Rebeca is as beautiful as someone holds out a hand without even knowing the color of your eyes. thanks for reply.
You’re very welcome.