The Grubbsian

I recently moved over to a MacBook Pro as my primary laptop and development machine.  With the recent advances in virtualization on that platform (namely VMware Fusion) it's become possible to run both Mac OS X and Windows (XP/Vista/Server) in a VM quite happily.  So when my new laptop arrived the first thing I did after watching the cool intro video, was install VMware Fusion Beta 2. 

This newest version adds some exciting features and improved stability so its a good choice if you're moving to Mac.  Despite how good Fusion is, there are some things you can do to tweak Windows to play a little nicer in a virtual environment.  I'm using Windows Vista but these tips will apply to Windows XP as well.

5 Ways to Improve Windows Performance in VMWare Fusion

1. Turn off all non-essential services.  There are a lot of services that Windows enables by default a number of which are totally unnecessary for day-to-day use.  By going through your running services list (run: services.msc) you can trim quite a bit of memory use.
2. Ditch the screen saver.  Because you're running in a VM in an OS that already has a screen saver, you can turn the Windows one off.  If it kicks in while your not paying attention it will start to eat up additional resources while you're trying to do other Mac OS work.
3. Do you really need 3D acceleration?  Chances are you're not going to be playing games in the VM so you can safely turn off the 3D acceleration option in VMware preferences.  This may not actually eat up resources in the VM but it will add some overhead to the VMware container.
4. Areo is pretty but slow.  Just resort to the Windows Classic or Windows Vista Basic theme and just deal with it.  You should get your "Ooh that's pretty" vibe from Mac OS X anyway.
5. Turn off system protection.  Since you'll be backing up your Mac OS X machine (and you will be backing up right?) you don't need the added protection of using system restore on the guest machine and it just eats up virtual hard-disk cycles.

So there you have it, a few quick ways to speed up the performance of Windows on Mac…friends at last.