[ale] Virtualization

[JK]

So I'm running VirtualBox on a 3Ghz dual-proc P4 with 3GB of
RAM.  (Maybe it's just hyperthreading, but /proc/cpuinfo
reports two CPUs, and I haven't looked inside the box. Got
the machine from my employer after a cancelled project.) The
host OS is Ubuntu Intrepid, and the guests are mostly WinXP.

Whenever a guest machine does the tiniest little thing --
scroll a command window a couple of lines, for example --
it seems to peg the guest's (virtual) CPU, and really
elevate the CPU usage on the host.  This seems unnecessary,
and I'm wondering if VMWare or Xen or some other virtualization
technology makes better use of the underlying hardware.

Any experiences to share?

Incidentally, I posted a while ago about a "Monster PC for
< $500", and yesterday in my TigerDirect mailer I got
offered basically that exact machine for $399.  So I
went for it, and I'll probably be repeating this exercise
on a quad-core 8GB Phenom in a few days :-)

-- JK

-- 
I do not particularly want to go where the money is -
  it usually does not smell nice there. -- A. Stepanov