In general parallels for mac is great My question is one of how much is virtualisation as a software emulation layer on top of OSX drivrs and how much is paravirtualsation - really "time sharing" the hardware? The intel VT-x obviously is good for CPU operations but USB hardware for example seems to take a very large amount of kernel processing time which makes me thing its just a software layer on top of the native mac drivers. is this inherent to a microkernel OS like OSX or something to do with how parallels has been implemeted. wouldn't a fully paravirtualised host and guest require paravirtualised aware drivers on both the host and guest? will leopard have this? just kindof thinking out loud.. crises Mac - 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini (was core solo yuk). 2GB ram