VMWare Workstation for two kinds of processing

[truedisbeliever]

I do computer work in 2 ways:
1 = typical knowledge worker running multiple MS Office programs + browser tabs, with a premium on user interaction.
2 = ayptical data mining with CPU-intensive software and 2GB data sets, premium on throughput.

So 1 is interactive, 2 more like batch or OLAP.

Would I get better speed or throughput for profile 2 by isolating 1 from 2 in separate VMWare Workstation images, then swap to whichever image I wish?

Smaller registry and less stuff overall in 2, switch to it before walking out of the office each night, blah blah?

Or would the “overhead” of VMWare, or whatever other virtualization facility might be appropriate, offset most of the putative speed and throughput gains?

System is on Vista now, going to Win7 for stability (finally ). Has 4GB expandable to 8GB. Vista + anti-virus and other drivers currently occupies about 3GB. Even processing profile 2 seldom pushes RAM utilization close to 4GB, but I might reprogram the software to keep more in RAM.

Thanks for your insights!

[Paul T]

1 is typically memory intensive as Windows needs to keep multiple programs running. 4GB should be more than enough to prevent swapping to disk - this is the enemy here.
2. Data mining is typically disk intensive and any extra layer between the software and disk is your enemy. I would add a second hard disk reserved for the databases to prevent Windows using it for anything else.
If you are upgrading to Win7, add an extra disk while you are at it and you wont need to run VMware or anything else. 4GB is sufficient for your requirements.

cheers, Paul

[truedisbeliever]

Yo! Thanks for the suggestions.