How much ram should I alocate to VMWare

[CoopsLife]

I have a 13" Macbook that I am getting ready to upgrade to 4 gig of ram. When I start VMWare there is a setting for memory that says to set up for faster MAC OSX or for VMWare. Also at this time I have 1 gig and it recommends minimum 128 recommended 256 or max of 856. When I add my 4 gb do you have any recommendations for the settings from your experience for best use of my Macbook. I only use windows for MS Money and Tax Software so thats about all the info I have.

[WoodyZ]

I only use windows for MS Money and Tax Software so thats about all the info I have.

If your only going to run one Windows VM for what you stated and your going to use Windows XP then set it to 384 MB for the VM and you will not need to upgrade your Memory. However on the other hand it you want to run Vista or multiple VM's simultaneously then you will need to add additional RAM.

[CoopsLife]

I am defiantly going to upgrade the ram to 4 gb. I might add Linux at some point and might use the Mac for video editing so ram will be good. Do you still recommend the 384mb or max to 856mb. Also what do you use on the setting that selects to use 1 or 2 Virtual Processors.

[WoodyZ]

I am defiantly going to upgrade the ram to 4 gb. I might add Linux at some point and might use the Mac for video editing so ram will be good. Do you still recommend the 384mb or max to 856mb. Also what do you use on the setting that selects to use 1 or 2 Virtual Processors.

If your going to upgrade anyway then I'd give 512 MB to the Windows XP VM.

On a MacBook you only have 1 Physical Processor and some with 2 Cores. Even if you have 2 Cores I would only use 1 virtual processor. If you had a system with 4 or 8 Cores then using 2 virtual processors would be fine.

Edit:

BTW when you add the additional memory those values you're presented with will change to reflect the added memory. As far as how much to give to which VM you should look at what required by each OS along with what programs you are going to run in relation to how many VM's you want to run at the same time... basically you need to do the math and then decide what will work for you.

[admin]

If all you're running is MS Money and some other tax software, 856 MB RAM seems like overkill. RAM you allocate to Fusion in this way can't be used by OS X as long as the guest is running (it'll be freed once you quit), and OS X likes RAM even if no program is explicitly using it (among other things, for caching disk access). You haven't said which version of Windows you're using - unless you're using Vista (e.g. if you're using something like 2000 or XP), I concur that something in the range of 256-512 MB should be fine.

Similarly, you probably want to use one one virtual processor since your use case won't benefit from dual processors and using it comes with some overhead.