With virtualisation there are 2 things to look out for: the hardware (mostly amount of memory and speed of the disk(s) the vm(s) are running from) and the vm settings (disk size, ide or scsi, memory, amount of vCPUs, etc.). Look at the activity monitor in Windows and check if Windows has enough memory or if it needs more cpu power. Most people with Visual Studio will use quite some memory for the vm, something like 4GB or even more. Expanding the Macs memory from 4 to 8 would make that possible in your case and might solve the problem but it is advisable to check the memory usage in Windows before doing so.
Btw, read your blog and saw something about copying the vm as backup. That is a very good thing to do but you may also want to check out the snapshot function. This allows you to create a copy of the vm's current state. If something goes wrong (like catching malware or you screw up some config file) you can revert the snapshot. These are exceptionally great when trying out stuff. The blog is a good read, sure sums up the adventures of switching from one system to the other 
Message was edited by: treee
At this point I don't own any 5400 RPM drives so I can't give you comparison numbers for that.
From my experiences with Windows 7 VM it likes resources. I've found I get quite acceptable performance with 2 vCPUs and 2.5 GB of RAM. Anything less in either resource and it does feel a bit sluggish. I'm only running productivity applications so would expect your development tools to require a bit more than I'm getting away with. I bought my RAM for the upgrade from OWC (www.macsales.com) as I have done for many machines in the past. Great company for anything Mac.
One last note, it has been my experience that Unity is not quite a s fast as single window or full screen. Basically it will be personal preference whether you want the absolute best performance or the convenience of unity.
Thanks for the helpful answer. I am indeed running the original 5400 RPM harddrive as my vm drive. At some point I will probably upgrade but I've already spent more than I had bargained for to get this set up working I have my eye on the new Lacie 1 or 2TB thunderbolt drive that came out. Looks like a good potential solution for VM's, and may also help for doing things like video editing work given the high throughput.
I am also thinking about doing the OWC upgrade for RAM.. good advice!
treee wrote:
With virtualisation there are 2 things to look out for: the hardware (mostly amount of memory and speed of the disk(s) the vm(s) are running from) and the vm settings (disk size, ide or scsi, memory, amount of vCPUs, etc.). Look at the activity monitor in Windows and check if Windows has enough memory or if it needs more cpu power. Most people with Visual Studio will use quite some memory for the vm, something like 4GB or even more. Expanding the Macs memory from 4 to 8 would make that possible in your case and might solve the problem but it is advisable to check the memory usage in Windows before doing so.
Btw, read your blog and saw something about copying the vm as backup. That is a very good thing to do but you may also want to check out the snapshot function. This allows you to create a copy of the vm's current state. If something goes wrong (like catching malware or you screw up some config file) you can revert the snapshot. These are exceptionally great when trying out stuff. The blog is a good read, sure sums up the adventures of switching from one system to the other
Message was edited by: treee
Thanks much for the response. It sounds like you are confirming that the memory is probably one of my key issues. I am going to order that RAM Upgrade asap...
Thanks for checking out my blog as well . It has been quite an experience switching and I'm having fun, I guess that is the main point. I am not as familiar about the snapshot functionality of VMWare but it sounds like it is more efficient than doing only the file backup. Thanks for giving me some food for thought!