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I've been trying to run windows 7 on my MBP on parallels so that I can test different browsers. Trouble is, it is just slow, I mean excruciatingly slow. Like booting it up takes 15 minutes. It's ridiculous.

I'm running a MBP with 4M Ram and and i5 quad core processor. I mean really, this should be enough. Any tips on getting this to actually perform?

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I had the same issue. Moving the Parallels virtual machine to an external hard drive completely changed it for me, from terrible to tolerable.

I'm using an old laptop hard drive, 5,400rpm (so not even a fast one), and it works fine.

All you need to do is plug in the hard drive,drag the Parallels virtual machine to the hard drive, and double click to open (or go through the Open virtual machine dialogue in Parallels.

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Hmmm.. I have one, so I will try this. Thanks, this sounds like a really good idea. – Chris May 1 '12 at 10:55
I tried it, and it definitely was a bit better.. like you said, from terrible to tolerable. – Chris May 1 '12 at 13:17
Great, glad it works for you. I think that a 7,200 rpm hard drive would be better. Standard hard drive on an MBP is much too slow for anything, seriously considering ditching the DVD drive and getting a small SSD. – anthonyg May 1 '12 at 15:08

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