Parallels Desktop: MacBook Pro Required?

Ben Rudolph is the marketing director at Parallels. I asked him this question. His response, with permission to post, folows.

Q: Is there a significant technical advantage to selecting a MacBook Pro instead of a mere MacBook when using Parallels Desktop?

A: “Not really. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have sufficient horsepower to run Windows XP and OS X side-by-side via Parallels Desktop. The only advantage that the MacBook Pro has is the recent inclusion of Core 2 Duo processors, which are upwards of 40% faster than first-generation Core Duo, and the fact that the MacBook Pro has dedicated video RAM, whereas the MacBook pulls video RAM out of the main memory. This makes the MacBook Pro faster than a MacBook when running Parallels, but not so much faster that the average user needs to spend the extra $1000 or more. If you’re looking to use standard Windows only apps like IE, Outlook and Project, a MacBook is more than sufficient.

Vista also runs well in Parallels, and support for this OS will get progressively better as Microsoft gets closer to release. While we don’t yet support the Aero interface via hardware accelerated 3D graphics, this is something that we’re planning on including in the next version of Desktop for Mac (due around the turn of the year), so soon, you’ll be able to run Vista with a complete Aero interface at the same time as OS X on your Mac.

What I would recommend, however, for anyone looking to run Windows via Parallels Desktop on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, is to purchase the 2GB RAM upgrade. This will enable you to give 512MB of RAM to XP or Vista, and still keep 1.5GB for OS X, which is more than enough to run Mac applications at full speed.”