I am running an Ubuntu instance on VirtualBox inside XP. Here are the details:

Host: Windows XP Pro
Guest: Ubuntu 8.10
Total RAM: 3GB
RAM For VM: 1GB
Total Video Memory: 128MB
Video Memory for VM: 40MB
Hard Drive: 200GB
Hard Drive for VM: 30GB
Processor: 2.80GHz Core Duo

The problem is that whenever I am inside the virtual machine, things seem so much slower in general. For example Firefox, Eclipse take longer to load, dragging windows show a lag etc.

I have tried running Ubuntu before (not inside a VM) and it seemed fantastically fast. So I am disappointed to have to deal with this situation. But I need access to the XP partition without having to reboot and hence the attempt.

I am surprised with the perceived slowness since the whole world seems to be doing virtualization and I cannot imagine everyone works on slow systems knowingly.

My question is - is there something I should be doing to boost performance? Am I doing something wrong?

This is my home machine and I am not sure if this is the right forum to ask. Thanks.