How to optimize Parallels so it's not such a memory hog?

[freaky]

I recently upgraded to a Mac Pro, mostly so I could run Parallels to test websites in Windoze and Linux. My machine came with 1 GB of RAM and after running Parallels it made my machine extremely slow. I upgraded to 3 GBs of RAM and set the amount of memory that Parallels could use to 176, which was the maximum they recommend.

My machine isn't terribly slow anymore but after looking at the System Monitor in OS X it's using 8% of the CPU and 2.19 GBs of RAM. This was after I just launched Windows and opened Firefox.

Does anyone know how I can optimize it so it doesn't use up so much of my CPU/RAM?

[nosillacast]

This is a great question. the original released version of Parallels allowed you to set a slider for the max RAM, and I kept it at 1024MB (I have 2GB installed). Now it seems to want this odd number (like 176) but then hogs up whatever it wants. It's also started to keep a VM Memory Dump file (in ~/Library/Parallels/winxp called winxp.mem. Mine is 1.46GB tied up right now.

Have you posted on the Parallels forums? they're very active and might have some advice (I haven't checked there either!)