MiketheBook 0 Junior Poster in Training

I'm running, or trying to run, Parallels Desktop for Mac 5 on my Mini Mac (2009 - 2GB RAM) with Snow Leopard 10.6.7 and Windows XP set at 512MB. The trouble is that Parallels prl_vm_app file chews up nearly 400MB of my remaining RAM reducing my Mac's speed down to zero. It does even when I pause the VM. Parallel's support is awful unless you're prepared to pay through the nose to get it so I'm wondering what to do to get rid of this app or reduce its consumption of valuable RAM.