MacTech Magazine has just released it's 3rd year of the most comprehensive benchmarks available for virtualization solutions. If you've not seen the article yet, they are now live at:

http://www.mactech.com/articles/special/1002-VirtualizationHeadToHead/

What do you think?
Are you surprised by the results?
Are you interested in Windows XP or Windows 7?

Amazing the number of people that are reading the article online already ...

Neil,

Do you have any explanation for the battery test results? Specifically, why does the MacBook do so much better when emulating Windows 7 than the MacBook Pro?

Maybe they're using the dedicated graphics card instead of the 9400M in the MBP which would give better performance, but use more battery.

Well, that wouldn't explain why there is basically no difference in XP vs 7 performance on the Pro, but a rather large split on the 'Book.

The video benchmarks show the MBP faster than the MacBook in video so the card is doing more than the built-in video of the MacBook.

Also do they use the same battery, so the faster machine uses more power?

Yes, I understand what you are saying, comparing the MacBook with the MacBook Pro. But what *I'm* asking is why, when comparing the emulators running XP vs. the emulators running 7, there is a significant time difference on the MacBook, but virtually no time difference on the 'Pro?

Okay, I see now. Win 7 gives better battery life on the MacBook.

Good question.

I used to run Parallels until an upgrade crashed my entire virtual machine (both the virtual and the BootCamp it was created from). I did not see any mention to stability (I know the article was focused on performance) and read another article that pinged Parallels for stability issues. Can anyone comment on their experience with the latest release of Parallels? I have not had any issues with VMWare Fusion since switching and I have never looked back. Thanks in advance...

Well
Windows crashes even PCs running natively . So really I cannot comment

Sorry for the delay in responding. These came in while I was at Macworld Expo.

The battery on the MacBook lasts longer than the MacBook Pro for both Mac OS X and Windows. The primary reasons are that the processor is not as fast, the screen is not as big, and the MBP has its faster graphics processor turned on for these tests.

Make sense?

Arrrggh! I guess I need to try to express myself better! In the testing of the MacBook, with either emulator running XP, the battery time is about 150 minutes. With either emulator running Win 7, the battery time jumps up to about 215 minutes, roughly a 40% increase. When testing the MacBook Pro, there is virtually *no* difference in the battery life between the emulators running XP or 7. I'm wondering why there is a (significant) performance increase with Win 7 on the MacBook, vs. XP, but no concurrent performance increase on the Pro?

Whew! Thanks for your help!

I said the same thing, but misread what he asked also.



Interesting question.

Edit - scotty beat me to it, slow poster.

I think that the issue here is still likely the graphics processor. Try going into the Energy Saver control banner and choose better battery life on the graphics. And see if that makes a difference.

NOTE: Windows sometimes takes up to 3 days to fully reconfigure after hardware installs/changes.