I am experiencing a performance problem using Outlook 2003 RPC over HTTPS within Windows XP under Parallels Desktop. Performance is fine when running natively under BootCamp, but when running under Parallels Desktop the Outlook application freezes up with an hourglass cursor for about a second once every 60 seconds when Outlook polls the exchange server. Using the XP task manager, I can see the network utilization blip up to about 0.5% during the hourglass cursor under Parallels. I see the same network blip once per minute under BootCamp, but without the hourglass and without the freeze. I have my VM set up to use a bridged ethernet connection and I am using the Parallels network adapter that was installed by Parallels Tools. I tried disabling the Parallels network adapter in Parallels Tools and this made performance noticeably worse. My router shows approximately 80000 bytes transferred with each poll under Parallels, but only about 1000 bytes transferred with each poll under BootCamp. Outlook is configured identically (same bootcamp partition/logon/etc. used in both cases).
Hey Eric, Are you using the latest version of Parallels? I've been successfully running Outlook 2003 on XP SP2 under builds 1970 and 3186. I don't notice much slow down at all, and I'm only running with a gig of RAM total. Cheers, Josh
