Running parallels on a Macbook pro 17". If I run just as a mac, I get well over 3 hours of battery life and all is good. The second I launch Parallels, I not only get my battery life cut in half, the temperature of the macbook pro goes through the roof...I had to move it off my lap last night. This was running RC1 Are there settings I should be dinking with to let Parallels know "Hey, I'm running on battery, take it easy..."
The emulated machine apparently doesn't have power management hardware, so it uses more power. There probably isn't much you can do in this version about it except get a laptop cooler with fans to keep the machine cool, and plug it in if you need the VM for a long time. There are no settings for power I know of. My cooler and the big battery in the wall keep my MBP happy.
I can suggest to Pause VM when you are not working inside (menu VM->Pause). It will free all resources for you primary Mac OS X and will save power as well.
This would be easier if you followed the suggestion that I've seen here before - turn the 'play' button (triangle) into a 'pause' button while the VM is running. Which of course brings up an inconsistency in icons... normally the '" is used for Pause. So you'd need a more intuitive icon for suspend (something like an arrow pointing to a disk?) /D
Agreed. Is there no way Parallels can develop some sort of power management componant of the Parallels tools to keep MBP's a bit cooler? Seriously when I'm running parallels my MBP registers 145-150F on the processor. A bit toasty.
