VMware Fusion v4 on MacBook Pro 17 vs. MacBook Air

Question

Hello everybody,
I have a problem with my early 2011 MacBook Pro 17'' when running VMware Fusion v4 Trial - both the VM as well as my MBP are running annoyingly slow when I start up a VM. Switching from the VM to a Mac app takes what seems an eternity. When setting up an OS in the VM, the Mac becomes almost unresponsive. This applies to VMs running Windows 7, Windows XP, Mac OS Lion.
I just can't believe that the MBP is not powerful enough to operate on Lion OS while running a VM at the same time. I have experimented giving the VM 1,5GB RAM and 2GB RAM - doesn't make a difference.
VWware slows my Mac down so much that both the Mac and the VM become unusable.
Same thing happened when I installed the Parallels 7 Trial.
I don't believe that the Mac has any hardware issue - it performs satisfyingly and is as fast as you'd expect from a current model, when not running any virtualization app.
And here comes the real catch now: on my mid 2011 MacBook Air - which has a slightly slower CPU - VMware is blazingly fast and I can use Mac OS in parallel without hardly noticing that the VM is running.
Yes, I am aware that because of the SSD the overall impression makes the MBA probably appear a lot snappier, but then again it has only 2 cores as opposed to the MBP's 4 cores. However, I had absolutely no issues running VMware Fusion v3 when I was still on Snow Leopard with my MBP17.
So the machine can't be the problem, it was running fine before Lion with VM application, but the VM software is doing fine on a MBA, so the only two explanations left that I have are: the combination must be the problem (MBP17 + VM) or the MBP17 has some funny setting that I am not aware of which slows it down that much.
Does anyone experience similar problems?
Any solution for performance issues that anyone is aware of?
Help greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Thanks a lot! Tried what you suggested and it actually seemed to improve VMware Fusion v4 in the beginning but I soon ended up with an estimated 30% of the performance for both the VM and the Mac.
Finally I tought - hey, the whole system (physical hardware and the VM) always becomes slow when there's acutal disk access... so I checked the disk in Disk Utility - and there it was: it needed repair. So I rebooted from an install disk and repaired my MacIntosh Hard Disk and there you go: MUCH better.
Switched from VMware Fusion to Paralles in the end because VMware had issues with IE in the VM and seemed slower.
Problem solved