I've just copied an XP SP2 VM from my MBPro to my iMac and re-started the VM on both and see quite different idle usages. Neither high, but the MBPro is twice that of the iMac. Both are 2.33GHz C2D with 3GB RAM machines, and the VM has 1GB assigned.

Idle CPU % reported by Activity monitor on the iMac is 3.5-4% where as its 8-8.5% on the MBPro. While they aren't high, the MBPro is twice that of the iMac. This is in single window mode.

The same is true in unity. On the iMac I get roughly 6% idle but on the MBPro, 11.5-12%.

Both machines running OS X 10.5.1 and Fusion 1.1.

I'm very happy with the idle usage of the VMs, but was just suprised to see this difference.

Cheers

Russell