I briefly flirted with virtual machines when trying to run games, as I reported earlier, but with only partially successful results. When it came to somewhat more serious issues, such as code development for Linux, though, things fared much better. In fact, my Ubuntu VM seems to work nearly flawlessly, and it does make me wonder how I lived without it. No more fiddling with annoying Cygwin quirks while trying to get things to work! And, it must be said, you get the nice GUI interface that Linux posers like me can't live without*. Yes, performance can sometimes take a noticeable hit, especially (and obviously) on already intensive software like Eclipse, but that would only be a problem were it my primary work environment. As it stands, I'm liking it, and hoping to find other nice uses for VMs.

* Let me add, though, that I grew up in a world of Red Hat 3, and even went through the ordeal of installing said OS. So don't put me down as a newbie just yet...!