New Mac User - Memory Management Question

Hi all, Very Happy New Year ...

I am a proud owner of a 2.53 Ghz Core2Duo MBP with 4 Gig memory. This is my first Mac ever.....so I'm quite excited.

I just installed Vmware Fusion 3.0 to ensure compatibility with some of my windows programs. During the installation of Windows 7 on the system, I realized that the installation allocated 1 gig of ram to Win 7. Is it possible to increase it to 2 gig, since I Gig is the bare minimum for windows 7? And how will it affect the rest of the system. Or should i be looking into memory upgrades?

Thanks very much .. EmmaK

 

Congrats on the Mac! It took me awhile to get familiar with Vmware too. It is easy once you get the hang of it. Once youve made the memory adjustments you will probably want to make sure the other settings are correct with some of the other options in order to get everything just right.

in Vmware, go to the menu at the top of your OS X screen and select - Virtual Machine - Settings -

Then click on the "Processors & Ram"...


and then adjust it to what you think is best...


- Ben

Are you using, or have you considered using Bootcamp and running Win7 native inside of it without using Fusion? It will obviously be alot faster but downside is you won't have access to OS X while in the Windows bootcamp partition other than being able to access shared directories/files.

*edit, and with virtual machines, the more memory the better especially if your running alot of apps in either or both environments. But see how 2 gig allocated to the VM works for you. I have 8 gig total with 3 gig allocated to my XP virtual machine and works great. But when using the "Unity" feature of Fusion, which is pretty cool, things start to slow down a bit. Seems faster when running the VM in full screen vs using Unity.

 

I run my 4gb machine with 1.5gb going to any virtual machine i run. It eats up a lo of ram, but its only doing it when you have the virtual machine running. when not using it, don't leave it running. I've seen some people who leave it running all the time for some odd reason.

 

thanks for all your replies. Given the cost of DDR3 rams at the moment, I will stick with the 4 gig.

But I have another question ... I need to remove the currently installed OS - Win7 Ultmate RC1 and replace it with the RTM version. How can I do this with the VMware?

cheers, EmmaK

 

go to Fusion's "Virtual Machine Library"... you can get to it by selecting the Window menu option at the very top of the screen while in Fusion (but with the virtual machine powered off) - Then select "Virtual Machine Library".

from there you will get a setup box with a DELETE option. Chose the "Move to Trash" option when asked.