less is more when it comes to VirtualBox CPUs

Below is a very non-scientific graph after measuring the start-up times of various applications with a stopwatch.  This was using a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine under VirtualBox 4.0.x. With dual CPUs, IO APIC emulation is turned on, causing a huge performance hit.

app startup time under virtualbox

Moral of the story: run Windows XP under VirtualBox with one CPU and IO APIC turned off!

export Evolution tasks

This is pretty ghetto, but there seems to be no "export" feature in Evolution 2.28.3 for tasks.

1. Open up Tasks, select desired category.


2. Choose File > Print > Print to File, output to a "tasks.pdf"


3. Run "evince tasks.pdf"


4. Select desired tasks, right-click, choose Copy


5. Hooray, now you can paste the list into a text editor, Google Docs, etc.!