For some time now, I have been watching virtualization options for my PC. The rationale being that virtualization offer me the convenience of testing different configurations easily. 

Up to now my option is to have different harddisks set to these alternate environments. The applicable hard disks are pluged in manually when required. This task has been eased a bit with the arrival of firewire and USB based external drive caddies.

But I cannot do this for my laptop. My laptop, like most other peoples, come preinstalled with this Windows XP configured in a certain way. And the BIOS does not have USB/firewire boot option. Supposedly the new MacIntosh can boot to firewire, but only heaven knows whether it works in a reliable manner.

OS virtualization software, most common examples are VmWare and MsVirtualPc, offer the possibility of converting my (next) laptop to a virtual machine. I would love to have full linux, and a few different windows configurations, available on demand from the laptop.

A recent article "Building the Ideal Virtual Desktop" can be seen at http://www.crn.com/sections/special/reports/sellingsmb.jhtml;jsessionid=MAETAM5J5EET0QSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleId=190302237&pgno=2&queryText=

----

However, it should be considered that VirtualizationIsRootkitting
----
CategoryProductivityTool