What hardware really affects virtual machine performance?

[jedfox]

I'm looking at getting a new macbook or an old mbp in the near future. I'd like to get the smoothest possible setup for running vector-(like adobe illustrator or corel draw(bla))based embroidery programs with VMWare Fusion on a notebook, is there any specific piece of hardware that maximizes the performance of virtual machines(running vector-based programs)- the cpu, ram, hard drive (write speed), or the graphics card?

The two I'm considering are the aluminum MacBook
(2.4ghz/4gb ram/250gb hd/256(integrated), about $2150 w/tax & applecare)
or a refurbished MacBook Pro
(2.6ghz/2gb ram/200gb hd(7400rpm)/512(discrete), about $2300 w/tax & applecare)
Which would be better suited to handle these applcations?

 

[richard.mac]

lots & lots of RAM! thats about it. virtual machine cant take the full advantage of multi core processors and graphics chips yet.

 

[ant-macyourself]

Agreed, RAM is the most important thing for you to worry about. The general motto with Macs is "the more the better" and this is even more true when you're running a virtual machine. I've also found that you can get better performance when you tweak Windows display settings a bit. Bringing the colors down to 16-bit and using the classic Windows theme really sped things up for me.