[joe]

I recently bought Parallels 3 for my Core2 iMac (2.33GHz, 3GB RAM, 7600GT graphics, 7200rpm HD) and installed WinXP SP2. It's quick but I'd like to try to squeeze every bit of performance out of my hardware.

The advanced settings are set to optimize performance for the Virtual Machine and Acceleration level is set to high. System RAM is set to 512MB (optimum) and video RAM to 16MB (recommended). Tho I like Coherence mode best I think the video is slightly smoother when running Parallels in full screen mode. And finally, I've been considering converting the virtual hard drive to a plain disk.

Is there anything else I can with my setup to speed things even more?

[The Milkman]

Can't help you directly but have you checked the Parallels forums? They seem quite lively.
http://forums.parallels.com/

[Full-Auto]

I've been running Parallels for a couple of years and then I installed Fusion (VMWare) when it released. Fusion is faster than Parallels and it supports Direct X 9.0 (3D graphics acceleration). You have to download 2.0b for this beta feature.

But it's pretty slick and while I still have Parallels installed, Fusion is now my virtual OS host of choice.