I'm looking into them 'cause I think it would be cool to do all my online interwebby surfing in a VM so that any problems won't affect my host PC.
 
Opinions?  Comments?  Rude flatulent noises and guilty expressions?

No, and I didn't know such a thing existed. Way too complicated for my tiny brain.

craigb
 
Rude flatulent noises?

At last...
 
My prodigious talents might actually prove useful to somebody.
 
 

Just as long as the smell is virtual Steve.

For Windows 7, is this what you're thinking of using?
 
I'll stick with two desktops:  (1) Internet, and (2) Studio DAW/Graphics/Video work. And I'm thinking of buying a gamers laptop in the near future as a traveling companion for games, internet and music.
 

Microsoft's Virtual PC is one of the free ones (the other is Oracle's Virtualbox ).  The best one is VMware Workstation but it costs about $250.
 
The entire idea is to NOT have to buy more hardware.  Plus you can try out multiple OS' (including more than one version of the same OS) on the same host machine.  In my case, I'm thinking of using one for all internet surfing so that if anything bad happens it doesn't affect the main PC.

There is an easy way to try out Virtualbox if you have an extra thumb drive lying around.

Linux live USB creator will install a Linux distro along with the Virtualbox software. You can plug it in while running Windows and click virtualize and it will do the rest for you.

There are some setting you can adjust and it doesn't allow for persistence but it may give you an idea of how it will work with your current hardware.

I have used it but had difficulty balancing how much memory was used for the host and for vm. With some tweaking it may have been a smoother experience.

Matt

You do need some decent memory to run virtual box.  A PC with 2gb of RAM will be slooooooooooow. In this case AP is right (RAM is EVERYTHING!!!!).
 
When I ran Oracle's virtual box I had 8GB of ram for my 64bit Ubintu server and allocated 4GB to an XP virtual machine. That way, with the VM up Ubuntu still had 4GB available.

 
Talking of 'boxes'....
 
I once asked the assistant in JJB Sports what a cricket 'box' was.

Apparently, it's a piece of cheap plastic which men put their genitals in....
 
 
 
 

Or, Katie Price as she's better known.
 
 

What is it about your online interwebby surfing that is potentially harming your host PC?