What is the minimum amount of memory these days for a MacBook or a MacBookPro for that matter?

The maximum for the MacBook is 2GB of memory and 4GB of RAM for the MacBookPro (3GB for the previous model).

Links:
MacBook Specs (Apple site)
MacBookPro Specs (Apple site)

I use 3GB of memory in my MacBookPro. I maxxed out the memory for Parallels and Adobe CS3. So far, so good…

Running Parallels Desktop (windows running on a Mac in emulation) is very slow on a MacBook with 1GB RAM. Barely usable if you run just IE and quit all other Mac programs, but what’s the point really? So 2GB is a minimum for doing this. Boot Camp on the other hand (windows running on a Mac natively) will run better with just a 1 gig, and is faster as well, but you are only running windows, in other words, you don’t have the Mac OS running at the same time.