re: #51 negativ

Because VMWare and Virtualbox are both excruciatingly slow. Wanna see how Windows 7 runs on a 486? No problem, just install it in a VM.

Either I’ve been doing something criminally wrong, or virtualization just isn’t meant for desktop PCs.

Did you turn on virtualization in your BIOS and in VBox?

I have several VMs using VirtualBox on my laptop and even more on my desktop. The slowdown is virtually imperceptible in most cases. I run Server 2003 and Server 2008 in VMs.

The VMs in my new desktop are way faster than native Win 7 on my laptop.